One of the feelings I have struggled with most of my adolescent and adult life is a feeling that I do not belong anywhere. I know where this originated. I moved all the time as a kid, I have attended about 15 schools in three different countries, I have needed to learn two different languages in my lifetime, including relearn my native language once. I've been excluded from activities because of my parents' wounds handed down the generations, and therefore never attended social gatherings, parties, excursions or camps. I was an isolated child, the focus of my childhood was family. And it felt like that was the only place I belonged.
And then I grew up, and I had to move into the world, and I was an alien. A weirdo. Not quite Chilean, not quite Australian, not quite German, but all of them at once and none of them at the same time. I didn't follow fashion trends, or all the popular artists, I knew more about politics than anyone my age cared to know, and my focus was on the future rather than immediate. I thrived on knowledge and education and had grand plans.
At university, I became deflated by not finding others who thought like I did. Or at least voiced it at the time. Uni was for drinking and having fun, not for serious career building and soul searching.
Now I'm a mature aged doctor, and I have done a lot of internal work. I have faced the past head on and challenged it, fought it and won. I am a weirdo in my own way. I am an individual, we all have our quirks. But I belong in a family, I belong to my kids, my friends, I belong to my workplaces and cherish all of those other weirdoes I work with.
I share the same yearnings and emotions as other humans, I love and dislike things with the same intensity, and whether those actual things differ makes little difference.
I used to pride myself in being an individual who never fitted in. Just because you are unique, it doesn't mean you can't have things in common with many people you come across, and still be you and no one else is exactly like me. (A lot of people I work and live with would sigh a sigh of relief at that!).
I think what I'm trying to say is that once you find out that you fit into your own skin, you belong. Because I belong to me, and that makes me happy now. I am mine, all of me. My boundaries are clear, I know where I end and begin and how much of me I am willing to share, and who deserves that. My skin fits exactly, I am comfortable and happy in it and I love what my body and mind can do. I understand its limits and I love to stretch them without doing harm.
I understand how I work and why, I understand how I can make others happy, and how nurturing I am, and alive I am.
I love life, even the yucky bits.
I definitely belong in this flawed and awkward world.
