Out of place (prompt)

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

Moving around so much as a kid basically made it so that I was almost always “the new kid” and would feel horribly out of place until I was able to make a couple of friends. Jumping from job to job until my late 20s only served to perpetuate that dynamic.

I got to a point early on where I simply stopped letting feeling out of place bother me so much. Does it suck? Absolutely. It’s incredibly uncomfortable and anxiety inducing. But at the same time, it is just a feeling, and can be overcome by treating people with kindness and respect, trying to get to know them, or simply doing what I was there to do and leaving. The latter is especially easy when it comes to a job or a class or a random errand.

Even still, I have spent most of my life never really feeling that I actually belonged anywhere that I was, except when I am lost in a book or my own thoughts and my surroundings become irrelevant. So, unless I am in that place, I feel out of place and somehow disconnected. I can still build meaningful and strong connections with people, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t feel a strong sense of belonging in many situations. And that’s ok.

Perhaps the lack of “belonging” is from a flawed process in my mind, I don’t know. It’s just something that has always been that way, and I never really questioned it, because I always have that space and those moments to fall back on. I don’t necessarily need to belong somewhere to be happy. I’m content with my ability to float from situation to situation and place to place.