If The Shoe Doesn't Fit Try Another One

A reader’s comment on my last post got me to thinking about fitting in and we all know that once I get to thinking, it's hard to stop. So, I'd like to share some honest reflection on the matter. As always, I welcome your thoughts. As you can see, I pay attention.

When I was a very little girl, I distinctly recall being utterly disinterested in being “normal” in any way. For the first several years, I was convinced that I was extraordinary in some fashion or another. Perhaps I might possess magical powers or a hidden ability to fly. Even now, I could swear that I can feel wings furled against my back and in times when I need comfort or protection, they enfold around me like the soft arms of a protective parent. And as to my magical powers, well, I’m still not convinced that I don’t have them. Of course, I don’t think of them as hocus pocus, Merlin-esque kinds of powers; but rather the kind of natural powers all animals are endowed with but as humans, we lose as we are socialized while growing up. So obviously, I hadn’t the faintest desire to slip submissively into the dull coma of supposed normality. It wasn’t until every abnormal thought or action or perceived weirdness (good and bad) was picked apart, ridiculed and squelched by someone whose acceptance was paramount to me, that I lost my way. I stopped knowing who I was and became who I was told I was. I began to want desperately to be as normal as possible and always failed because my heart wasn’t in it. While I believed for all that time that I wasn’t allowed to fit in, I know now that I made sure that I didn’t. Somewhere inside, that little girl still had her hand on some of the controls (bless her weird little heart!).

I’ll be honest and say that when I deeply respect, admire or am attracted to someone, my first instinct is to try to fit in with them. I try to maintain who I am, but if I feel they are not accepting me, it gets harder and harder to hold on. A reason for that may be that I have only just started to allow myself the freedom to live as I feel and have spent most of my life trying to squeeze myself into a proverbial shoe that never fit … namely, my family.

I have always felt like a satellite floating around outside their world, always making sure that everything was running smoothly, but never really getting to come in for a landing. Ironically, there are a lot of people out there who feel like they don’t fit in with their families. Maybe, on some level, it’s an unfortunate normality on my part; one of the few places I am exceptionally ordinary. Maybe it’s a good thing. Sometimes, knowing others are in the same boat, feeling just as alienated and ostracized as you, actually manages to offer some comfort. Still, if I’d had a choice from the get-go, I would never have signed up for that club.

Please, don’t be frightened of a public unloading of scary family details of an alarmingly over-personal degree. I really don’t have any desire to make you all uncomfortable. It is embarrassing to admit that it wasn’t that long ago that I would have had no problem in doing so, however. I have grown up and learned enough that I look at that part of my life now and see that some of what I have suffered is not really respectable and reasonable to broadcast and I no longer feel the need to campaign for yes-man sympathy. So I will just say that my family was very adept at using their love and acceptance as a bargaining chip for my silent and unwavering servitude. It wasn’t their only transgression, but one that definitely created a version of me that I work every day to bid adieu. And in the spirit of fairness, I have learned (though a hell of a lot of listening and observation), that like everything else they do in a desperate attempt to not be “found out” to be flawed and odd, they are not unusual in that sense. I don’t blame them, really. They just don’t look that deeply into themselves and their motives. I doubt they will ever fully understand how they lost me. But, it was the realization that I had done everything they had asked up to a point of literally giving up my life for them, and they still treated me like the token freak. When I finally grasped that and let go of ever wanting or needing their acceptance and unattainable love, I felt free.like an animal let out of a cage after a lifetime of captivity… as if I could fly.

There isn’t a group or sect or religion or belief that makes me want to be in that position ever again.

Now here I am, on a quest for something that I named “Journey to Hotness”, but it is about so much more than the title bespeaks (as I’m sure you know). It is an expedition to uncover a life where I am not being controlled by anyone or anything but my true self and that includes a body that was built on lies and pain. It is a mission to look in the mirror and recognize what I see as being me… Sunny. To be able to put on the clothes that make me feel comfortable and beautiful and happy. To be able to dance or walk or run or make love or fuck in the way my heart and body aches to do such things. I want to not worry so much about being easy prey for muggers or rapists because I can obviously not run, even if for my life. I want to know what it’s like to lower myself on top of a lover and enjoy the experience without worrying and wondering if I am crushing his bones. These are trifles to some, but they (and others) are and have nearly always been my most profound yearning . And the thing is, when all of these desires (which are reasonable to expect) come to fruition, I know I will feel more genuinely like myself than I have felt since I was a very little girl. And I know that it will make me beautiful. Maybe not to you and maybe not to your best friend or your boss or your doctor or your pot dealer or your ex-girlfriend and that suits me fine. I want it for me. Just… me. And if it makes anyone else happy in the process, well that’ll just be a bonus.

If there is some group out there that seems to fit me, the *real* me, then I’ll be okay to fit in. I feel that way about the people I love. And to all others, they most certainly will get either a physical or spiritual flipping of the bird as my thoughtful reader suggests. My life is not to be spent trying to fit in with or to fall into line with anyone; not any more.

I’m excited. The more I see who I really am, the more I feel filled with joy and the more I remember the seedling I once was. I want to know what kind of amazing things that little girl who wished on stars and wrote songs about cartoon characters and didn’t care if her outfits were like everyone else’s grew up to be. I just know it’s gonna rock tits when I finally do. ;-)