Belonging

Herself speaks.

Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to feel like one Belongs.

-----

I have never fully felt integrated into the Group. Any Group -- Classmates (from grade school through college, to professional school); fellow Campers at summer Camp; the Mom groups; Colleagues; other categorically-similar professionals (same gender/societal position - "Women Professional Blahblahs"); and so forth. For over twenty years, I worked in a profession that straddled fields -- as neither scientist nor true other-professional, I was neither one nor the other. And as a long-time telecommuter, I was nearly invisible on the whole for the entire time. 

As a transplant to this desert land, I have not been (nor will I ever be) a Native. I'm a non-Spanish-speaker in a population that is 80% Hispanic. I'm a woman disinterested in stereotypical 'girly' things -- makeup/nail art/wine/home decor -- that make for female small talk. Even online, I'm a bystander in the social groups. Forever peripheral. Sometimes, that's OK -- I'm an introvert in a sea of extroverts.  All the same, though, it means that I'm never fully part of the whole. I'm a hanger-on, an extra, someone who can be easily shed, who does not count. 

Communication: so difficult. I'm a person with a need for precise vocabulary usage, in a land of people who are annoyed by oddly-specific language choices. I try to say what I mean, and am forever stymied by people who talk around what they intend or insinuate secondary meaning where I cannot see it in their own words (or worse, where I do not intend it to be in mine). Forever needing to watch my word choice, to ensure my face is doing the right things and my tone is modulated, to ask reciprocal questions (I tend to forget to do so, because I am concentrating on All The Other Things). Who has time to settle in and Belong, when just Being in the Group is so much work? 

Imagine what it would be like, to be comfortable in a room full of people. To just feel that they like you, accept you for who you are, are glad you are there -- and not just because you can do something for them, but because of who you are as a person. 

Wouldn't that be lovely?