‘I Don’t Belong…’

“‘Take me to the place where all the poets went to die;
I don’t belong,
And my beloved, neither do you.
Those Windemere peaks look like the perfect place to cry;
I’m setting off,
But not without my muse…’

This song played on a constant loop in the background last night after my best friend sent me the track so I could listen. And these were the very lines that got my attention. For some reason, I have always felt like I never really ‘belonged’ anywhere. Of course, we’ve all felt as though we didn’t belong, at one point in time or another. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve felt it the most during your teenage years. At the time, I felt like it was a bad thing to stand out and not really fit in because it always seemed like I was missing out on a lot of typical teenage experiences. I remember asking my Mom why I never fit in and she’d always me that it was probably because I had a very different way of looking at the world around me. I won’t lie to you when I say that it is the least convincing thing you can tell a teenager who has only just begun to find her place in the world. Being a fish out of water feels exactly like the struggle you’d think it’d be. And for somebody who has moved around as much as I have, I can tell you that starting over once in every few years made me feel even more out of place than I originally did. But I soon realized that moving around wasn’t the problem either because we’ve been where we are right now for over 5 years now and I still feel like I don’t belong sometimes. The thing is, it took me some time to come to the conclusion that I might never feel like I actually belong all the time because this world is way too big for that. We all feel out of place sometimes and that is okay. It might even be a good thing, for all we know. Being different helps a lot more than you think, too! You are more selective of the people you invite into your lives, more careful about the people you choose to trust, and no, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to miss out on a bunch of things. You probably just haven’t found the bunch of people you want to experience those things with and that is alright because you will someday. Life is funny like that. And before you even realize it, you’re going to embrace being different and actually going to love it. I’m not saying it will happen anytime soon; it can’t happen overnight. It’s one of those things that happens to you when you’re not even paying attention, I guess. But for now, I hope you understand that feeling like you don’t belong isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You’re meant for much bigger things, after all.”

Yours truly,
The Shubhster. Xx

Featured Image by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash