Belonging

Belonging.

How does one belong? No really, how?

Is it when I feel accepted, or is it when I am accepted. If I'm accepted but I don't feel accepted, do I still belong?

People ask me where I'm from. I don't know how to answer that question.

I was born in Texas, but raised in Ohio. I'd like to claim I'm from Texas because I identify with the weather, and the individualist culture. But I only lived there for the first three years of my life. It's my birthplace, but it's not really the origin of Me. I don't know what it's like to live in Texas.

Then there is Ohio. I really don't like Ohio. I don't like to be associated with it. As a place, and as a general culture, I just don't identify with it at all. I don't want to be “claimed” by Ohio. But so far, it's the leading contender for where I “belong.”

I've lived in Arizona, a short while in the Utah desert, and most recently, California. I've never really felt like I belong in any of those places.

Sure, I've felt accepted, and I've felt comfortable, but no place has ever held me, no place has ever spoke to me; told me it is my home. Conversely, I've never arrived somewhere and felt “home,” or that I wanted to stake my claim to a place.

I'm always passing through. Sometimes for a longer time, sometimes for a shorter time. But everywhere I go, I always know that my time there is finite.

I had a moment of recognition in L.A. I was amongst a group of friends—4 or 5 of us. We were diverse, from different backgrounds, races and cultures. Because of that, I felt like I belonged, because I was part of the mix. But as we were hanging out, languages came up, and everyone started talking about their home life and the other languages they spoke because their parents were of a different ethnicity. I realized that as diverse as these friends were—each one of a different race—they all shared this common thread of being bicultural, bilingual, and it united them. I was the odd one out. I didn't have a distinct culture to identify with. I was just white. And in that instant, I didn't feel like I belonged there any more.

Nothing had changed. No one spoke to me differently, and we still had fun, but for the rest of the evening I felt like the black [white] sheep. It made me sad.

After that night, I started thinking more seriously about where I belonged. In my reflection, I didn't come up with any place. In Ohio, I feel like I would have had too many experiences that people that have lived there their whole lives could not relate to. I have this feeling that even if I went back to the origin of Me, that I would no longer fit. I've been transformed by my experiences, and my opinions have changed, and those things would make it much more difficult to find belonging amongst what I remember the vast majority of Ohioans to be like.

Equally, I don't feel like I fit in other areas because my origins have shaped my opinions and core tenets. My moral code and integrity is largely influenced by the Christian culture I was raised in, even though I don't practice any religion now.

Therefore, I'm as though a freshwater fish that swam into the sea and adapted to breathe the saline water. I feel I can't go back because no one will understand what it is to breathe the saline water, or the other types of fish and sights I've seen. Not that I've lived an extraordinary life, just that my background experiences are different from most people's there. On the other hand, I'm obviously an interloper in the sea. I don't belong there either.

The only time I feel like I'm fitting into people's understanding is when I'm traveling. A traveler is a person that comes from one place and goes to another, and when you see them, you accept that about them, questioning much less whether they belong at their present location because it is only a waypoint for them to get to where they belong.

I fit in, in a lot of places—I can be likeable when I want to be. Typically, I can break off a little piece of myself and show it to someone and say, “See, it's like one of your pieces!”

I relate to many people that way. But as with anyone, I have many pieces, and maybe unlike many people, I feel that my pieces are wildly diverse and combined in a rare manner, and I struggle to find communities of individuals that share many of the same pieces.

That was the realization in L.A., that I thought I was matching more pieces with people than I really was. Or maybe, that everyone else was matching just as a few pieces to me as I was to them, when in reality they had many pieces to share with each other but fewer to share with me.

So what now? My feet itch—all the time they tell me to move on.

I'll find a place once in a while and I'll stay until I find that I've exhausted my pieces to share, and then I feel like I don't belong any more when I see everyone else seems to have endless pieces to show, share and match with each other.

It's that grade school feeling of being left out because you don't watch the same television shows, or wear the same fashion, only now it's because you don't have similar ideological backgrounds, or cultural experiences or childhood struggles.

I felt like I belonged in L.A. when I dated someone from there. I felt like she vouched for me. I felt protected by her influence. As soon as she broke up with me, I felt expelled by the homogeneous force of the city. I lost my in. Always on the outside, I feel I orbit social circles and only interact when someone from within reaches without and holds on to me for a second, like a playground merry-go-round where I'm held in the orbit until I'm let go, and then I float again.

I hope one day, that if I travel to enough places, I will by chance find a place that I know I can call home. A place I can claim for myself. A place where I can find people with who I can share and match many pieces of myself.

~*~

That's it for today. I promise the next post will have some adventures from my current trip. This theme of belonging has been weighing on me and as such, it has become part of the larger theme for this journey. It's something I reflect on often. I welcome opinions and personal experiences from anyone willing to share.