The other day, I read something that moved me, immensely. It spoke to a part of me that I’ve carried so long, and didn’t even know how to name. It was an article about the Taylor Swift concert. It went like,
It felt like being in an altered state but also being so deeply understood in the most enormous crowd you’ve ever stood amongst, shoulder to shoulder, screaming and singing and dancing like nobody is watching because that’s the gift of Taylor’s music.
I think it’s because she’s not cool. Which sounds funny because how can she not be cool but I’ve seen Madonna and Beyonce and Gaga in concert and they’re cool and with coolness comes distance. Taylor runs warm. Taylor leans into being friendly and approachable and vulnerable that embodies what a Taylor Swift concert feels like.
- Mia Freedman, in a lovely Substack article titled ‘What the Taylor concert was really like.’
This was a moment that brought, quite abruptly and vividly, to my attention a truth about myself that I’ve felt and inhabited in almost every moment of every day for so many years, and never quite had the capacity to objectively speak of. I realised that I’m a former, current, and quite likely to continue to be well into the future, Uncool Girl.
I dare say if there’s anything I’ve been absolutely consistent with all through my life, as far back as my conscious memory stretches, it is being someone who had uncool thoughts, emotions, feelings. My entire overarching vibe was generally uncool. To normal people, at least. Whatever that is. We don’t know how exactly to define their group - but they seem to have quite the chokehold over our psyches, our whole entire lives.
As I was reading this evocative piece from Mia Freedman’s Babble on Substack, I remember feeling this really deep knowing that I LOVE warm, friendly, approachable and vulnerable. That energy is my home, my soul’s essence. And I’ve always yearned to just feel allowed, embraced and accepted in being that.
And god, the whole being ‘cool’ and the ‘creating distance with coolness’ thing? The nonchalant, aloof, popular, mysterious. mythical Cool Girl act I’ve been taught I need to aspire to? My whole life, I was made to feel that I need to be the Cool Girl in order to be worthy of desirability, friendship, love, admiration, appreciation, social survival. And lately, to be ‘seen as high value.’ And it has been so, so fucking exasperating and life force depleting, honestly, as ardently as I pursued it in the way only a former Gifted Child would.
I happened to share this with a dear friend I was writing an email to yesterday (the author of the inimitably exquisite The Deep Rest Salon, beloved Emmie), and I found myself describing to her a sense of physical softening in my body when I flirted with the idea of simply, fully embracing that I will never be ‘cool’ enough. That I’m actually like Taylor - kind, warm, vulnerable, intense, wears her heart on her sleeve. I run warm. I’m not cool, I’m definitely not a cool, chill girl. Definitely will be making art, poetry and music from the fuel of the feminine urge to diss a shitty ex.
I remember a family member, one who finds joy in transcendentalist philosophy that quite often manifests as almost-avoidance, asking my why I wanted to bother confronting my cheating ex at all. This was on probably day three of my discovering the betrayal. I was advised to just, “Cut ties and let it go.” Rise above it. Don’t react. Don’t talk about it at all. Well, I do see their point, and I’m certain their advice came from a place of love and a desire to eliminate my suffering.
But I am, fortunately or unfortunately, a child of Kali. And I can’t stress enough, I am a woman.
I can be the softest, most loving, most tender of hearts when I am held in safety, honoured, respected and revered in the container of a relationship. But if I am fucked with, you won’t catch me fleeing to the tallest mountaintop and silently ‘rising above’ it all.
Of course, I’m fully aware of the power and potency of starving a situation from my attention. But, I will get there when I get there. I will, first, to whatever capacity I require, fully inhabit my entire spectrum of emotional expression - my darkness, my feminine rage. And I will be seen, heard and witnessed in doing so. I will not spiritually bypass, I will not sprinkle love and light plastic glitter, I will not ignore, and I will certainly not be ignored.
Anyway, coming back from my Goddess tangent, I was reading about Taylor and making myself feel my way into an energetic taste test of how it would feel to just let it be okay to be uncool. I thought of how all the people of the snooty high school I went to - that became the voices of the demons in my head - can now, at last, rest and retire. It was a fruitless endeavour for them to be trying to make something cool out of me anyway - Leo MC, Pisces Sun, Cancer Moon, Mercury Aquarius, Venus in Aries, Manifesting Generator hot mess that I am.
The part of me that strived to be the Cool Girl was truly, deeply tested when she felt like the very embodiment of a Cool Girl was ‘picked’ over her in a hopeless affair of the heart. And that upheaval - and all the months it took me to make peace with it - feels like it was meant to make me find ease in these shadows by throwing me headlong into them. Like throwing a creature into a pool and hoping it figures out how to swim. I remember this to be one of the biggest heartbreaks I’ve ever had, followed by a whole dark night of the soul, that came from feeling rejected. Feeling like all the performing you did to ‘win’ the object of your anxious attachment addiction didn’t perform enough, and you should’ve been ‘cooler’ to be accepted, loved and chosen by that dude. It sounds like a very silly trope, but if you’ve actually lived it, you know it’s the deepest of transformations and initiations from girlhood to womanhood. One day, you’ll meet him again, and you’ll be amazed how average he really is, and how, not even for a moment, in all your longing to be chosen, did you actually sit back and reflect on whether you’d ‘pick’ him yourself in the first place.
As it often does with writing long texts and long letters, both my cringe defaults, the act of sharing with a sister inadvertently led me to reveal even more of myself to me. I realised how, all my life, I’ve gazed upon myself from my mind’s eye and tried to pivot - even micromanage - the unfolding of my decisions onto what my inner child believed the Cool Girl would do. And what I really, really wanted to do, from womb, heart and soul? It was always the far opposite of her. This internal conflict, unvoiced, unnamed and unrecognised, lived in my head rent free for many, many years. Acknowledging it took away some of it’s power.
I did not want to make this piece of writing preachy at all, I wanted nothing more than the relief of just naming the ache. But I’m going to take a risk by saying what I am about to say, and hope I still maintain my intention.
I need to deliberately remind myself, so often, to reflect on and bask in awe of how it is so beautiful that I now have a platform (who doesn’t? but you know what I mean) and community where my authentic sharing is celebrated. I get to read messages about how my feelings expressed in the written word sometimes serve as an activation for people to live a little differently from that moment on.
And yet, everyday, I have my shadows sitting on my shoulder calling me so, so cringe for pretty much everything I ever do or share.
Honestly, I feel like everything I’ve built for myself in terms of authenticity, expression, writing, blogging, simply being me in the digital public eye, is in fact a very beautiful, very poetic justice to my childhood.
I grew up a girl who always felt ignored, unimportant, unwanted, everywhere she went. Not really considered, usually feeling like the most disposable member of any social group. On the fringes of family, an outcast in many ways.
A girl who was never asked how she feels, nor felt safe to take up space in her feelings, now gets to hear that she empowers others by being eloquently, abundantly, generously expressed in how she feels. Longform feelings, no character limits.
Isn’t it an incredible blessing how I am already loved, chosen, celebrated and chosen some more, by friends and community who I consciously CHOSE myself - not just who *happened to* live in my neighbourhood, be in my class or any sort of automatic obligation like that? I didn’t anymore dilute, dim and ‘manage’ others perceptions of me into being accepted into any given group that happened to always be hanging around near me. My only friends are friends whom I chose and kept choosing, kept nurturing, and they’re literally all over the world which is sad and also so, so beautiful. We built our own beautiful sacred containers of friendship and poured into them, mutually.
Isn’t it an incredible blessing how I am already loved by myself - even if people in my life are always falling away in their own seasons. Some friendships ebb and flow, some never return. I still get to already know that I am worthy of being surrounded by those who reciprocate my energy. I am worthy of and deserve to be loved by those who, like me, know how to love so generously that they will take 4 steps towards me in seasons of life when I can barely only take 2.
Because they are familiar with being poured into just the same, from being loved by me. People who see, cherish and honour what a lover I am. Sometimes it feels almost silly how, even at my ripe old age of almost 30 (lol), I need so much help and handholding to realise that how anybody outside this golden circle feels/reacts/perceives my too-muchness is just not my problem.
Gwen, The Asian Astrologer, nailed it for me in her note.
It was so deeply uncool to love with your whole heart - I could write a whole book on how much that has come up for me all my life. In friendships, in relationships.
I mean, if you follow me on IG, you must notice how even on my most productive, efficient, happy, creative and FUN days, I’ll easily post thirty or so stories. I don’t have to make myself do it. It just flows from me. It genuinely lights me up and excites me so much. I spent so many years feeling so judged, so cringe for aligning to the kind of expression that flowed naturally from me.
Oh, the very busy, valid and Cool people aren’t supposed to be sharing freely, let alone generously. Don’t show your face on social media too much, there should be scarcity around seeing you so that people wait for you to post something (an actual thing a person I had a crush on once said, yes I had questionable taste). If you find it easy to post more than, maybe, three stories a day, you must be a very silly, unvaluable person who doesn’t have anything to do.
Being ‘above’ social media, claiming you’re never using it, priding oneself on never appearing on it (even if you spend all day on it, which is way too many of the “I never post” people from high school that I know) is probably the most annoying form of virtue signalling for me to hear someone incessantly brag about, at this point. Especially when it’s being flexed to someone like me whose business, earnings, community and networking is intricately tied up with the use of social media.
It was a whole trip to reach a place where I don’t become emotionally wrapped up by cringe and vulnerability hangovers. Maybe I’ll never completely stop having them, I’ll only get better at being able to sit with them and feel the discomfort and be okay with that, which is it’s own kind of delicious freedom. And yet, despite all of it’s greys, nothing has gifted me more fulfillment and truly, deeply valuable connections in my business the way my Instagram has. Nothing. This is, obviously, not business ‘advice’ at all, but it sure is an example of how doing the cringe thing is sometimes pure gold, a beacon for the right people to find you.
Of course it was, and continues to be, deeply uncool of me to share on my social media accounts in the exact, unhinged way that I do.
Of course it’s deeply uncool of me to prioritise my family having a home cooked meal three times a day, most days a week just as much as my work and to never, ever make this even one notch less important than my work. Of course its deeply uncool that I will never be happy in a life where I only enter the kitchen once a week because I’m a very cool, busy, modern working woman who isn’t supposed to have time for that kind of thing. Of course it’s deeply uncool how tending to the home makes me feel immensely fulfilled, and also deeply uncool how cooking and kitchen and nurturing and nourishment as a sacred ritual essential to life is a daily priority that I envision as a significant part of my ideal life. Of course it’s deeply uncool how I love, embody and idealize (for myself only) way too many traditional feminine things, in my own goofy, non-intrusive way.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how I haven’t identified with, glorified or celebrated ‘hustle’ for years now, and that I pray for a life where I never will.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how I do, indeed, love with my whole heart and go to my Hindi romantic playlist the moment a new crush enters my life.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how I send paragraphs and 11 minute voice notes. How I believe in cutely packaging and putting handwritten notes in tiffins of homemade food quickly delivered to a 2km distance.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how I want to wear sarees or suits with silk dupattas to first dates, and 50th dates.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how you’ll never, ever find me keeping hush-hush about my crushes and my moon rituals and my period. How I show up as the weirdest, kookiest, most salacious person in the room, and regularly give out permission slips for people who have only just met me to reveal their weird too. And too often, I find the most enduring friendships in this manner, of daring to be the cringe one first.
Of course it’s deeply uncool how deeply familiar I am with every flavour of yearning and longing. How I like payals, pearls, bindis, henna-tipped fingers for no reason. How I’ll wear red lips to a grocery store run and a meander about the garden. How I really, deeply, intensely care about filling my home, my life and my daily rituals with beauty, and caring about tiny, tiny details of my everyday life being made prettier and cuter. How I absolutely glorify the delights of being lovesick. How I believe in giving and receiving flowers without having to ask. How I speak, at tables one would least expect to hear it spoken, quite softly and yet proudly, that I do, indeed, yearn for love and want a man in my life.
There’s simply no time to be cool for me anymore, and I’m tired of trying. It’s honestly the most boring thing in the world. I’m putting it down. I’m going to go frolick instead.
Note: Emmie wrote about being uncool too!!! This energy is travelling beautifully through all of us and I am so here for it.
Okay , did i tell you i have met three people from the internet irl, in the last 3 months, and what all of them had in common? They all said something on the lines of - Oh oorja is so cool, she is a whole different vibe, i wish i meet her in real life sometime. And all i could say was well, she is just perfectly living her authentic design ☺️ just letting you in on a secret, all uncool people have gathered now to become the new cool hehehe and i bet all those cool high school kids are somewhere on the sidelines giving us views & shares even if just in secret 🤣 well thank you