“I didn’t belong as a kid, and that always bothered me. If only I’d known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier.”
― Bette Midler
“I felt like an outsider,” he said, and I felt sorry for him, wanted to cheer him up. Then, without thinking, I replied, “I have always been an outsider,” and instantly I knew, I had told him the truth. I had never said it out loud, never even thought about it until that day.
I was the child who was raised by her Grandmother because my parents were abusive and worthless. “Write about a happy memory,” the teacher asked in school, I wrote about the day I moved in with my Grandma. The teacher felt sorry for me, I didn’t understand why -still don’t.
In boarding school, I was the poor kid in the middle of privileged, wealthy little girls. At first, I envied and admired the way they lived, later on, it changed and they longed for what I had.
With 18, I was the young adult without a family -the orphan who was pitied because she didn’t have a home to go back to. They didn’t know my life was perfect. I was not bound to a place or a person, I was free like a bird, just like I wanted to be.
I became a foreigner when I settled with my husband in the country he was born in. To this day, my accent is like a tattoo on my forehead -similar to a unicorn I want to believe.
A childless woman among her friends with children, the female traveler amongst men. The woman who didn’t have a problem to go out for dinner alone, in a foreign country and an unknown city. I
I guess it’s true, I have always been an outsider. The one that didn’t fit in -not always by choice.
Being an outsider, what does that even mean? Perhaps it means you don’t belong and I assume in my case it’s the truth. I don’t belong, I don’t have the need to belong, it’s rather the opposite.
“Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.”
― Elizabeth Lowell,
Thank you for giving us this insight. Your singularity (if that is the right word) has meant that you look at everyone with the same clear vision, something those of us embedded in one particular family/culture/environment rarely achieve. I admire this openness to all very much indeed.
My dear friend, though I can see how you would feel “on the outside” I do not see it as being an outsider. Just a person with her own path, with a life different perhaps than what others experienced. Over time I think society has come to embrace (slowly) those who don’t fit neatly into a box and also to see the differences between us as a positive.
It’s great not to be one of the crowd. I think there are far more outsiders than most people imagine, and I totally get your “haven’t met a stranger in my life.”
You know, I believe it too.
Add me to the ranks of those who have felt like outsiders. While not as dramatic as your story, I’ve never quite fit in, always a bit different from everyone else – at home growing up, throughout school, at work. I still have a high need to belong.
Goodness, is my story dramatic? Just an eventful life I suppose.
I think it’s been very dramatic. Your life has been extraordinary and just one of those ‘milestones’ would have been significant in a person’s life.
Life can be too harsh. But, if we find strenght in the pain, and see how far we have come. We become our best friend, our own rock and we know we can do it.
Life is not harsh….people are. The way they judge everything new or different.
Yes you are right
I’m still trying to figure out if Daughter #2 is an outsider, in the sense that concept is mainly used here. Maybe she’s just more of an outsider to me, as her father is still sometimes even after our 28+ years together.
So relate to this. I choose to be an outsider and this quote says it all, “Some of us aren’t meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.”
― Elizabeth Lowell,
I love the quote too. Just a few lines sum it all up.
Nothing at all wrong with being an outsider, I’m one and have been most of my life. I find that it has seasoned me with compassion and wisdom that many of my peers lack. And given me experiences they’ll never miss, because they can’t comprehend them. Is there pity there? Yes. I have it for them..
I am a people person, haven’t met a stranger in my life. I am outgoing and open -still many will consider me an outsider.
Mainly because I don’t fit into their norm(al) or perhaps I make them realize that being differ
Really, isn’t each of us different, in some way?