That’s me, at age 12, with hair too big to fit into a ponytail and an awkwardly chubby body that few fashionable outfits could cover or even forgive. They called me the weird kid, at school, and they weren’t necessarily wrong. At that age, I collected pins from US presidential elections, would rather talk to horses than people and hid in the bathroom almost every recess to listen to The Doors on my beat-up Sony Discman. I didn’t fit in any of the boxes and at that age — hell, at any age — the people around you can smell the oddity on your slightly panicked breath.

As most kids of my kind, I reacted to the situation by adopting a “screw you” attitude, and that was never as visible as on that dreadful day when popularity and attractiveness was being judged and measured. On Valentine’s Day every year, students would send roses to each other, to be delivered in class on full display to the other students. The popular girls would ooh and aah over the bunches of flowers that landed on their desks, while others, like myself, would loudly declare how silly and obsolete this phony holiday was and how we actively refused to participate in anything from dances to decorations.

Once I reached high school I finally caved, but as the world still wouldn’t comply and my appearance and personality still did not merit any roses, I foolishly decided to send some to myself. The plan was to change how everyone viewed me; to re-brand the weirdo if you will. But the execution did not exactly give the desired result.