Otherness

It's difficult sometimes to live in a world, where you've never quite felt like you fit in. For as long as I can remember, I always felt out of place. I felt old beyond my years when I was young, and now that I'm approaching old, I feel young despite my years. How can such a conundrum exist? My entire existence makes little sense to me. If I don't even understand me, how can I ever hope to find another person who gets me?

I've often felt that I was always on the fringes of society. I wasn't bad enough to call myself a rebel, and not good enough to call myself a hero. I am sometimes painfully shy, yet I crave attention. I simply don't know what to do if I actually get it. I become a mess of tangled nerves and worry how much I may disappoint everyone. So I slink back into the shadows and try to stay hidden. I bounce back and forth between wanting the limelight and wanting to live in a cave like a hermit. Some days, I embrace my aloneness, and other days, I feel as if I could simply disappear and no one would even realize it for a very long time. If ever.

When I look back on the experiences of my life, I realize that I rarely ever did anything for myself. I always did what was either expected of me, or what I knew would make someone else happy. I did things to fit in with people who didn't really care about me, and I shunned things I wanted for fear that no one else would ever understand it. But this has led to a moment where I'm staring down at middle age fast approaching me, and I can't say that I've even had a real life. There might have been fleeting moments that I was content or at peace with the path I chose. But those moments were very few and far between. And I can say with all honesty, it's been over a decade since I actually felt what it was like to be happy.

When I look at the future, I see nothing but a very bleak picture. It frightens me. I see no chance at happiness, no chance for belonging, no chance for fulfillment. My life as I knew it once before has been taken from me, and I'm just holding the pieces. Knowing that I don't want to put them back together because for one, they're too broken. And two, because I never really liked the pictured they made anyway.

People in general seem to think I'm a little silly and a lot weird, and some things that seem inherent in all people, I simply just don't share. I feel a bit alien at times. Like I was never meant to walk in this world, because all the so-called 'normal' things that people do or want, I never much strived for. In fact, I can't really tell you what I want. Or where I would fit in. Because I've never known these things. I've simply shoe horned my way into places and situations and ways of life, when I knew I didn't fit, but didn't see any other options. It's like being that lonely square peg in a world full of round holes. You can keep trying to fit in, but you just never will.

I'm by and large, a dreamer. I always have been. But the problem is, while I take comfort in those dreams and fantasies, I wouldn't know what to do if they actually came true. I dream of things that in reality, I wouldn't want. But the dream still gives me comfort. In dreams, I can be or do whatever I want. In that world, I fit in. But the reality is, I don't fit in. And I never will, I don't think. I'm always going to be something other, something strange, an anomaly. There's no real place in this world for someone like me. And sometimes it's a very isolating feeling. To realize you simply don't belong in the human race. That you're so far off the charts, no one even knows what to make of you. Not even yourself. If you asked me what I wanted from life, I really couldn't tell you. I just know it's not this. Whatever this is.

Maybe I'm just destined to simply exist without purpose? Are some people here on earth for no real reason at all? I feel like everyone should have some reason, but I can't find mine. Maybe no one is here for any real reason? Maybe that's just another fantasy I dreamed up? Maybe all we're meant to do is stumble through this thing called life and then simply just stop existing at the end of it all? Maybe there is no reason for any of it? And maybe people like me who don't fit in are simply clued in to the fact that none of this really matters anyway, so why bother? That's what I'm starting to think. There's a quote from Angel that goes, "Nothing we do matters, so all that matters, is what we do." And I really wished I knew what the hell I was supposed to do.