Why Am I Like This?

Why am I like this? I used too have so many friends but over the summer to 5th grade to 6th everything changed other girls are getting boyfriends and their period and wearing tube tops and makeup and taking pictures for instagram with their iphone 12. I didn't like boys at all, I have never had my period but had a 1,000 pimples on my face, I wore big baggy sweatshirts and my hair was cut to wear I looked like a boy, when I did makeup it consisted of foundation that isn't the same color as my face and blue eyeshadow and bright pink lipstick and my phone is an android. Everyone hates me because I'm lesbian people judge me every single day. They put stuff in my locker and they stare at me and tell me to kill myself too. some of them hurt me physically and some hurt me emotionally. One day I finally listened to them. I wore a white crop top and lumps of maskara on my eyelashes and I covered every single pimple. I felt confident. At lunch they were serving my FAVORITE meal...sloppy joes! I was in line getting my food when someone looked at me and said "Fata$$" and they smered the food all over my white shirt. The next day I wore a pink crop top and wore makeup again and curled my very short hair I got made fun of again. Then spring break happened I had 3 weeks off. Normally words didn't get to me but I finally broke through one day. April 3rd 2009 I waited for my mom to go to work and then attempted suicide. Obviously it didn't work. I was in a mental hospital for 7 months and was home schooled. After a while it was time to go back to that prison I was so scared. So, what did I do? Instead of embracing my uniqueness, I ended up trying to be like everyone else. Ultimately, I pushed away any defining and interesting quality about myself, just in order to be accepted.As you can imagine, this was a disaster train to inauthenticity and zero self-worth. But, I was young, and being accepted by my peers was all I cared about.

As I got older however, things didn’t improve. At University, instead of flourishing in a new environment like I should have, I practically latched on to boyfriend after boyfriend, desperately moulding myself into the person I thought they wanted me to be. I took on their interests and beliefs, in fear of having my own opinions ending up alone. This behaviour continued for many years as I continuously tried to please people. Seeing others around me ostracised for being different only reinforced my behaviour. However, the effort to be someone I wasn’t was draining me physically and emotionally, and as time went on, I’d find myself craving more and more time in solitude to decompress and “be myself”. How tragic is it that I preferred and felt more comfortable being alone at a time in my life when there was so much to experience and learn? That I didn’t think those around me would accept my tastes in music, movies or hobbies?The fact that I never felt able to truly let people into my world, still saddens me to this day, but at the time, it was just easier that way. Creating a barrier between the “real” me and everyone else acted as a twisted form of self-protection. Deep down, I think I was just too afraid to let people down; that if they got to know me, they wouldn’t like me. “I’m always the kid, my nose pressed against the window, looking at everyone inside having a good time.”

“I didn’t belong in my family, so why should I feel like I belong anywhere else.”

“I may be included but I never really feel like I belong.”

These tales of exclusion, still holding the sadness of the original experience, are the voices of those individuals who have shared the deep loneliness and isolation they felt—and continue to feel—as outsiders.

There can be a number of basic scenarios that result in an individual being caught in a state of outsiderness but the experiences of not belonging in childhood have the most powerful and long-lasting effects. They can include:

The child who is physically and/or emotionally different than the other members of the family: Stacy was fair, blond and blue-eyed in a family where all the members had dark hair, dark eyes and heavier bodily frames. Emotionally she was independent by nature, an “I’ll do it myself” kind of kid, in a community in which the female members were docile and compliant, as was fitting their cultural norm.

The child who represented to a parent an individual whom the parent deeply resented: Jan had a strong physical resemblance to her maternal grandmother, a woman Jan’s mother had experienced as a rejecting and neglectful parent. Jan became the object of the deeply buried anger and resentment that her mother never expressed as a child, but was now directing toward her own child.

The child who is rejected by a parent because the emotional nature of the child, as it resonates to that parent, echoes the same emotional nature that the parent had rejected in themselves: Bill was consistently excluded in participating in family outings by his father for no understandable reason. Father, seen as a shrewd and ruthless entrepreneur, had been extremely successful in amassing a rather large fortune and owned a plane that represented his success. Although other members of the family were invited on the plane, Bill was blocked from being one of them. This unusual dynamic took a twist when the father became very ill and turned to Bill for support and comfort. The father, needing to be a “macho man,” had rejected Bill because the son reminded the father of that emotional part of himself that was “soft and vulnerable—the girlie part.”The child who is physically and/or emotionally abandoned because the parents blame the child for being born. Bevin was increasingly a problem in school and referred to therapy. His acting out behavior became clear when his parents were asked about their marriage and why they had decided to get married. Both turned toward Bevin and, with anger and resentment in their voices said,“Him." Fifteen years after the mother had gotten pregnant at seventeen, both parents were still blaming him for their having to get married.