I’ve been wanting to fit in for as long as I remember.
Fit in anywhere.
Jumping through hoops, putting myself in danger, going to extremes within and without just to fit in and belong.
How painful it is to live in this way. How lonely it is.
To want to be accepted. To want to have a gang, a family, a troop, to be taken in.
Feeling left out is such a familiar feeling that has haunted me from place to place.
And the shame of that desperation. The desperate one that wants to fit in. That feels as though everybody can sense and smell her. The fear of rejection, the fear of being found out as the stench of desperation wreaks off her. Sniffed out as the desperate one.
You belong to God they say, but what does that mean? Where does this longing to fit in come from?
If I’m not with that longing in my body, it takes me on a long car-sick ride. Homesick ride.
Maybe that’s what the longing is, a homesickness.
A homesickness that can’t be quenched by a physical home. By a gang or family to call me one of their own. Because that’s slavery. At the mercy of others to belong.
Something in me doesn’t want to be left behind. In the smallest way and in the biggest way.
Maybe it’s a deep knowing that every thing will leave me behind… Eventually.
Maybe this homesickness is a blessing. Not a curse. Maybe it’s a compass.
Follow me, follow this longing, it says. Not outwardly. That didn’t work. That led to trouble. Heartache. Bad decisions. Impulsiveness. Desperation.
Maybe inwardly. Follow me inwardly, in the body. Maybe that’s yin.
But let’s not stigmatize that outward reach. Let’s not make it shameful. Abhorrent. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be with others, to be taken in. It’s deeply wired in the nervous system to want to belong, it’s human. It’s survival. Not a stench of desperation but a human pull, a need even. A wiring.
And is it so bad that you can’t fit in? Is it something to be ashamed of? The group mentality will tell you it is. Because our culture is deeply wired to shame those who stand alone because we fear them. We fear the rejected. Their power. We fear their aloneness. Because it mirrors back to us the reality we don’t want to see. We don’t want to face. The reality of aloneness.
They will all leave you. Everyone will leave you. Everything will leave you. These are the calls I heard from my father’s death. His passing. These are the whispers, the rotting, the disintegrating, the turning to ash, the reminders he left me. Everything will come to pass. Sandcastles.
But the human wants the company, the love, the gang, the safety, the comfort. How can I reconcile this with that? Is it kind to deny that humanness. And only point to stark reality. Is it kind? It is and it isn’t.
There’s no answer here.
I’m not yet on the ‘other side’- if there is one – I’ve only heard reports, had inklings. I’m still wretched. I can’t say with full authority there is only the glory of God. That authority hasn’t been given to me. If it is to be given.
I can’t deny the pulls of the body, the creature -that’s for sure. That feels violent. I acknowledge trauma and have learnt to deeply respect it because that’s what it asks of me. It’s asked for acknowledgement and mercy. For slowness and gentleness. It’s not interested in the ‘Truth’ not in absolute sense anyway- whatever that means. And it’s been placed here by something, it’s not a mistake.
No mistake.
I don’t know what’s kind. But there’s mercy here in the simplicity of this moment. Beyond the narrative.
Everything else, I don’t know about. But everything beckons the second you move through life, through the day, the second you get off the ‘meditation cushion’. You’re pushed, you’re pulled. And it’s not easy to find that mercy sometimes. Beyond the narrative. Beyond the trauma.
I sense it now, and that is enough I guess.