I am sitting on the steps of our community pool. The water is sky blue and sunlight honeycombs ripple rhythmically from the surface to the bottom. Other people and children swim around us. My mother or grandmother are definitely lurking nearby.
I mind my business and play with my toys in the water. My favorites are the Barney character figures and plastic horses. I sit there in the water for hours and play. Just me and my imagination. Safe. Controllable.
Slowly, some children approach me. As little kids do, they eye my toys curiously, clearly indicating the desire to play. Maybe one even asks me if I want to.
But when they get too close, the alarm goes off. The energy bell.
Mine is sensitive and easily rung.
I raise up my tiny arms, a fortress around my toys and my space in the pool. I use the easy motion of the water and swing around, my back to the other kids.
I ignore them and continue on in my own world.
***
Did the chicken or the egg of my social anxiety come first?
I’ve never been one who easily trusts but most people in my life have also proven themselves untrustworthy. I clearly had the early instinct to put up defense walls as self-protection.
But such innate behaviors of introversion have been a form of self-destructive isolation as well.
I have always felt like I didn’t belong. I have also always desperately wanted to find what made me feel like I did.
I tried on many different identities in middle school and high school. I wore the theatre mask, the cheerleading mask, the student government mask, the burnout-don’t-give-a-fuck mask.
It didn’t help that we moved a lot. I went to four different elementary schools, two middle schools, and only two and a half years of in-person high school. I never had the time or opportunity to find belonging like most adolescents.
And then there was the straight up bullying.
In 8th grade, a group of popular girls falsely befriend me. They told me their guy friend liked me and wanted to be my boyfriend. He even pretended to, for a whole week.
Then when the gag was up, he called me fat and ugly in front of the girls and the rest of the school in the courtyard at lunch.
At the end of my student government run, I was forcibly taken from class and brought down to the school cops office. They accused me of selling cocaine and gave me enough information to figure out who ratted. I may have been doing drugs, but I never fucking sold them.
I stomped over to the student government classroom, hit the girl who lied, and proceeded to cuss out everyone else.
This wound ripped open extra wide a few years ago. I put on the academia mask for a long time. I spent years crafting a community, opening up what I was learning about my authentic self after a lifetime of just forcing myself to fit anywhere. I made new friends and I willed myself to trust them.
They deeply betrayed and disappointed me. I’m still recovering.
The walls went back up. And they haven’t fully come down.
***
Actually, the walls have transformed. Instead of putting my arms up to create an impenetrable fortress, I opened them up, but not to the external world. I opened them up and embraced myself, outside of the influence of others.
As I’ve gradually and tediously experienced the limbo of the last three years, I have been cursed and blessed with finally finding where I belong.
To and with and for myself.
I went back to the very basics of my own belonging. What happened to that little girl who could play for hours just in her imagination? Maybe she can handle being on her own, maybe she enjoys it.
But I had to discover how this older girl version of me could be a better friend to her.
I got in the sun and the pool and the dirt. I played music loudly and sang at the top of my lungs and danced really really badly. I made silly art and went out on solo dates. I got comfortable with my own company.
I centered myself and went back to what I loved, and I found what I was looking for. Turns out, the belonging wasn’t something meant to be found externally; first, I had to belong to myself.
Once I finally felt assured in my internal space, I discovered the truth of all those cliché sentiments: be your own best friend, know your worth, love yourself first.
Then, you will find where you belong.
***
Since my inner metamorphosis, I have a new perspective on belonging. I realize now that the more authentic I am, the more I find people who appreciate my true face and not the masks.
I find belonging in the classroom. Last spring, I received a card signed by every student in my class with the sweetest messages of how I inspired and supported them. Then they sang an impromptu performance of Hannah Montana’s I’ll Always Remember You. It made me fucking sob and I usually resist crying in front of people.
I find belonging in my home and with my pets. Every day when I walk into this space, I feel safe and loved and wanted. There’s nothing better than opening the door to seeing two smiling snouts and wagging tails. Each square inch of this home feels like a culmination of all of the spaces I’ve carried to get to this place of stability.
I find belonging in nature. I speak and sing to the avocado trees I grow from seeds. I plant a garden and infuse it with positivity. Every species of insect comes to visit—butterflies, bees, moths, dragonflies—and rest in the shade or drink the flower nectar. I feel special and chosen when the Monarchs dance around me in the breeze.
I find belonging in a very few select people. Those with whom no wall is necessary. Whenever I am in my loneliest moments, I remember how those individuals have demonstrated their love to me through their actions. Repeating positive memories of belonging in my head over and over until the feeling of alienation has dissipated.
I find belonging when I ask for help and a community of people shows up to aid.
I am no longer shrinking. I am expanding into myself.
I am sensitive and vulnerable, energetically perceptive and socially selective, creative and whimsical, joyful and sorrowful.
I no longer categorize my identity into specific masks for specific scenarios.
I deeply embody my authentic self and trust I will continue to find where I belong.