Fitting In

I have always been an outcast. I am not just saying this because I think that cliques are a way for insecure people to hide in the masses. While cliques are this, I think that cliquing is a natural part of human society--we gravitate towards people who are similar to us, and shun those who are different. Ok, perhaps outcast is a strong word. I don't think that I have ever been really hated by someone, but at the same time, I don't feel like I have ever belonged anywhere. Anywhere. (If you hate me and are reading this, then you suck for hating me.) Of course there are the people who I tended to avoid because they were just straight up jerks, but instead of talking about them, let us float back in time to an era many many years ago; Elementary School.

I attended an elementary school for 2 years which was called Kellogg School. Looking back at the friends that I made while at Kellogg school, I can see now that they were all the people who would be popular in highschool; all the jocks and all the skaters, all the people who had all the fun and got all the girls. We would spend our recesses playing sports on the fields, and handball on the asphault. Halfway through elementary school, I switched schools to attend Brandon School. The friends that I made at this school were the kids who were generally associated with the nerd crowd. The smart kids. We would spend recesses reading books (Yes, I was one of those kids), or playing make beleive stories on the jungle gym, or playing chess.

Now we reach Junior High and Highschool. These weren't exactly amazing experiences for me. I didn't dread waking up in the morning, but I also wasn't looking forward to spending six hours in stuffy rooms with my peers who were all trying to figure out who they were at the cost of other people's wellbeing. I wasn't friendless, but I wasn't someone who everyone was itching to be around. I didn't belong to any single crowd; I was a floater. Some lunches would be spent throwing the frisbee with the frisbee kids, and some would be spent balling with the ballers. Some would be spent talking about books and movies in the library with the nerds, and some would be spent talking about skateboarding with the skaters.

Now, this has given me a valuable perspective on cliques that most people don't tend to see because they stick to their own group, but there is a downside. People see me, and go "There is the Nerd, or the Skater, or the Jock, or the Smart guy...", but they don't actually know all of me. The skaters all think im a nerd, and the nerds all think I'm a jock, and the jock's all think Im a skater. I guess the one crowd that I never fit into was the cheerleading crowd. We all knew I wasn't one of them.

This led to a situation wherein I was incorrectly identified as a member of another group that was not the group that I was being identified by. If that doesn't make sense, think of it like this. To the Jocks I was too smart and not athletic enough, to the Skaters I was too preppy and not punk enough, and to the Nerds I was too popular and not smart enough, to the Christians I had too many non-christian friends and said bad words sometimes, and to the non-christians, I went to Christian Club too often and was a goody-two-shoes. I spent just enough time with each group to be associated by other groups as from a different group, but not enough time to become proficient in any acitivity or be fully associated with one group. To me, I was just well rounded. To everyone else, I was un-noticed. Average.

People tend to distance themselves from other people who they percieve to be too different, as a defense mechanism. This has led to a situation where, in the process of my trying to identify with lots of different types of people, I have been distanced from all of them. I am just 'that guy' who lots of people recognize, but nobody really KNOWS. They figure that I am alright at what they do, but that I must be better at something else. So even though they never see me doing that thing, they always associate me with that because they see me hanging out with people who arent them. I have spent so much time diversifying my skills and friends that all my skills are average and my relationships are superficial. People see that they and I aren't very close, so they assume that I am close with the other people.

By my age, most people have decided how they want other people to see them. They dress nice so people think they are wealthy and educated. They drive a truck so people think they are rugged. They ride a skateboard so people think they are rebels. They dress or decorate themselves a certain way so people think they are progressive. I do all of these things, and none of these things. I don't think that I will every truly fit into a single group. Maybe sometimes I will feel alone and depressed because of it, but at the same time, I will never have limited myself into being one type of person. I don't have to worry about the way I dress, or the words I say, or the car I drive because I am already dissasociated from everyone anyway. I can be who I want to be. Who I am.

I am my own group.