Fitting In vs. Belonging...

When I was younger, I strove to “fit in.”  I didn’t understand there was a difference between fitting in and belonging.  I don’t think I even ever thought about belonging.  I think myself, like most other people, strove to "fit in" because I was way too disconnected to myself to ever belong.

Fitting in has always required I give up a part of myself in order to be accepted, loved, allowed to remain.  Fitting in requires that I give up a part of myself to become more like the group I am trying to assimilate with...belonging does not have that requirement.  Fitting in requires you to lose a part of yourself which, by definition, will never, ever allow you to belong.  Belonging requires a commitment to remain, first to yourself and then to others.  Belonging requires that you give up nothing of yourself, but instead, you can be loved, accepted and cherished for who and what you are.

Fitting in requires that you give up so much of yourself that you begin to reflect what others are or what they want you to be.  Each time you do this, you move a little further away from yourself towards inauthenticity.  Sometimes we move so far away from who we are, we lose ourselves in the process.  And sometimes, we might not ever be able to find ourselves again.

For me, I had to give up the desire to “fit in” in order to finally find the way to belong to myself, first.  Once I belonged to me, it was much easier to find others to belong to.  Sure, my social circle got way smaller.  And that is ok today.  I do not need tons of friends, I just need the people I call friends to actually behave like they value me, love me and cherish me.  As I do them.

For me, an ability to fit in seamlessly, has been a curse.  Well, it seems like a curse.  I don’t know that I have ever pulled that off.  So this is just conjecture...but if you fit it so well that there is no line between who others want you to be and who you actually are, is that authentic?  I am really asking here, because I really do not know.

For me, I have had to pull back, leave and recalibrate innumerable times.  I have had to give up that desire to be popular and fit in so that some of those sharp pointy parts of me could be assimilated into my own understanding of myself, so that I could find a way to really belong to me, and then once that happened, I was able to connect with others in a truer, more genuine manner so that I found belonging and acceptance that was mutually given and received with a few choice others.

And that has been the lesson...you can spend your whole life attempting to fit in, cutting away the weird, odd and strange parts of yourself over and over again until there is nothing left of you that isn’t also found in a million other people.  Or, you can give up the fitting in and find yourself and then come to belong, wholly to yourself, and then you will find your people who love you for who you are, weird, strangeness included.  Nothing stripped away, but instead, your being is augmented and bolstered by the people who have come to love you for the beautiful weirdo you are...

Again, still...