Where Do I Belong?
I belong because I do not belong.
My entire life has been one long succession of exclusion, derision, and awkwardness. I have never found myself in the center of a group of people who I feel comfortable around and who are comfortable around me. There are a few reasons for this: a) I scare people by making remarks they don’t want to hear, b) I have a lot of trouble making small talk because I’d rather talk about REAL things, c) I have no interest in pretense and am not good at carousing.
At this point in my life, I don’t even know what the point of my life is. I understand that I am alive because I’m not dead, but why am I not dead? I have no quantifiable identity. I can say I’m a gardener, a musician, a writer, a knitter, an entrepreneur… but I’m not really good at those things in a social sense and I feel false claiming those titles. I just do those things because I like to do them – there’s no method and I don’t follow any specific sets of rules. I just do things because I feel peace and joy when I do them, not because there’s any expected outcome.
I feel like failure is just as good of an outcome as success because I learn something either way. I love learning more than anything – knowledge makes me happy and I feel successful when I understand a topic as thoroughly as possible.
I’m a mother because I actually have children for whom I care. That’s something, I suppose, because those children actually accept me. Otherwise, the only thing I can think of that I am good at is being weird. I am comfortable saying I am a weirdo, because I realize that my natural tendencies are socially unacceptable and, thus, “weird” in my current society.
I don’t even know if that makes me sad anymore. I just accept it. I don’t think I will ever find people who are willing to listen to the metaphysical or philosophical theories which consume my thoughts. I know there are people who share similar sentiments about small subsets of information or opinion, but I can’t identify with these people entirely because they take it too far – the extremity to which they go makes me very uncomfortable.
I have no investment in living up to a label.
And, I think that’s where my problem lies.
All feelings and thoughts and ideas are fluid to me. I see that they may expand or change or turn at any moment, and this is acceptable. Thus, I do not invest time establishing an identity for myself within any particular human group label. I embrace the idea that I don’t know anything, because it’s true. All things are speculation, even things that have been “proven” by science. They are proven only because they were observed – the “why” is never answered. The “why” part of life is the thing that I think about the most. I enjoy speculating about how the universe fits together, and so I don’t pretend to hold any particularly solid belief set.
Realistically, that is unacceptable. I don’t know why it’s unacceptable, but it is. I mean, I enjoy a good debate as much as the next guy – but just because I am bringing up things you’ve never thought of or showing you statistics relative to my point does not mean that I wholeheartedly endorse the point I am trying to make. It just means that I understand what I am talking about. Frankly, I’ve debated the opposing viewpoint many times, simply so that I may gain a better understanding of the issue in its entirety.
Now that I think about it, the core issue is that I have no passion about anything that other people tell me is important. I am not easily outraged. When I see something that other people start yelling about, I really just feel sadness with a mix of confusion, weariness, and hopelessness. I feel bad that the world is so messy and that there are always so many problems. Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t we love each other and do things that are good for other humans? Why can’t we work together to make this planet we all live on a good and happy place?
Because we’re human.
We are greedy, angry, hateful, spiteful, vindictive, seething, selfish, proud, and human.
I have a hard time belonging with other humans because I have a hard time working up anger about other groups of humans.
I’m not sure that makes sense, but I feel like all humans are equal until they prove that they cannot be trusted to care for other humans. At that point, they are fair game – if I came across them in a combat situation, they would not be on my “safe” list. And, that’s really all it comes down to. I see humans in one of two groups: safe or dangerous.
Perhaps the reason I really can’t feel comfortable in a group is that survival is my main goal. Everything else is superfluous because if I’m dead, there was no point in ranting about politics or whatever – it doesn’t make a difference what I can get angry about because there’s no anger when one’s body has ceased to work.
For me, this is a conundrum because I find myself wishing or hoping for death – daily. Not because I want to die, but because I’m so tired of living with the constant stress of humans battling one another. It overwhelms me because I wish it would go away and I wish I could figure out a way to make it go away. But, I can’t, because these are people’s identities that have caused the problems. My solution tends to be for me to go away so that everyone else can go on with the bickering and hate without my pointless interruption. So, my brain points me to the most obvious solutions: unconsciousness, solitude, or death. It’s really that simple. I’m really that simple.
So, Where Do I Belong?
I don’t know. I have never felt comfortable pretending to belong, so I don’t do that anymore. I can make it through social situations without angering other people by being silent and smiling a lot and agreeing with people and making noncommittal statements. I haven’t learned how to make it through social situations while actually being authentically social, though.
I can’t say I’ve ever been welcomed into any group of people with open arms. Honestly, any time I’ve tried to fit in with a group, it ends with the other group members turning on me in hostility because I’ve said something they don’t like because it doesn’t fit into the “approved” type of comments people in that group are allowed to make. This has happened to me so many times that I don’t even try anymore. I don’t know how that’s all supposed to work out, but other than me not even bothering to pretend to be normal, I can’t see any other way for it to work out.
I belong because I don’t belong. I am excluded by groups of people because they are groups of people. They are humans, just like me. They are afraid, just like me. But, they group together because it makes them feel safe. When I enter their safe zone and begin to make them uneasy, they take steps to ensure their group safety remains intact. And, that means removing me from the group or excluding me to the point that I remove myself from the group. And, I completely understand that my place is outside the groups because I cannot provide people with the group safety they need. I have always tried to provide people with the singular safety they need in the form of emotional support, though. That works for a little while, until they find a group that provides them “real” safety.
I don’t really feel anything about it. It’s just a fact of life, I’m not trying to gain pity or anything – just trying to explain how I see these things.
I understand them because they are simple to understand: we’re all human and we’re all afraid.
The only difference is that I happen to be a human whose only fear is love.
C’est la vie.