The Misfit
Is feeling like you don’t fit in a universal human experience? Since my earliest memories I have felt that I don’t fit in and as I have gotten older it continues.
Is this my self-centeredness? To always be drawn to the parts of my life that are less than conventional? Although as a 5-year-old child I didn’t know my adult life would not have the picket fence, husband, and 2 kids that I used to create with crayons.
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As I get closer to the end of my fifties this feeling still permeates my existence. Whether at work or at church or volunteering I still almost always feel a step out of place. I wonder if I had biological children if I would feel more like a belonging member of the human race. As a reverted catholic, childless, in a marriage with an age gap, I definitely feel out of place at mass and church activities. I worry that others assume I deliberately chose to be childless. Although, in a way, my life choices did make this a more likely outcome. Although, at the time, I would have chopped off my arm if it was the condition to marry my husband. Is that a good thing or was I desperate to hold on to the feeling of being wanted by someone I perceived as too good for me? Was I “over-rewarded” to use an evolutionary psychology mating term.
Most of my adult life I was medicated either with psychiatric prescriptions or my self-inflicted haze of binge eating highly-processed, carbohydrate rich foods. The last 2 years exploring a life with limited refined carbohydrates has given me a clarity and calm I have not experienced before yet here I am writing about this feeling of being a misfit that is still always with me and stops me from participating more deeply in life.
Despite this feeling, I have not totally given up, I recognize my life feels fuller when I make an effort to push past my fears and learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Today, I have hope……
