No Place for Me

I thought I'd try this just for fun. If I were to categorize myself, I'd consider myself a:

romantic-expressionist, anti-partisan, priorist-apriorist, deviance-relativist, practical empiricist, liberal Christian evangelist, borderline Marxist, modern post-modernist, social-reconstructionist, transcendentalist, multi-media artist, multi-media activist, conflict theorist, visionary philosopher.

Sumn like dat.

If you had any idea what I was talking about right there, you'd notice that some of my "classifications" are contradictory. Yes and no. Yes, they contradict each other; no, life is not full of single-faceted issues. Why would I have single outlooks on multi-faceted issues? So now you see why it's foolish to try to categorize someone... sometimes. Most people tend to prefer consistency over rationality, so there are some very sortable people out there...

Way off subject. Or not.

The thing is, I was in class the other day. And my professor stumbled onto the topic of group affiliations: how everyone in society has their niche or whatnot. And he called on me out of the blue and asked, "Who do you affiliate/socialize with?" or something to that effect. The catch was, he was expecting everyone in the class to have a group of some sort; according to Durkheim, society is responsible for everything, but that's another day's philosophy.

I really, really wasn't trying to stand out, I really wasn't. But when I thought about it, I really DON'T have a group that I identify with. Sure, I have friends. Sure, I have belief systems. But just because I associate with people doesn't mean that we have much in common; as a matter of fact, many of the people I hang with spend their time trying to change me because we're so different...

See what I mean?

So I answered my professor, "Um... not... really anybody?" (yes, I said it like a question) My professor then said, "Oh, so you're a misfit then?"

"Big time."

Okay, I've always felt like a misfit. I could go on and on explaining why, but that'll just confuse me as I write this. But yesterday when this happened, it was the first time that I came to terms with being a misfit. You see, (as I'm taking a deviance class, no less) there are people who are misfits because they just want attention; it's popular to be... different? Well, this isn't a diss to them; all I'm saying is that I'm not one of those people.

Put it like this: if at any moment I was to decide not to be a misfit, I wouldn't know HOW to not be a misfit. I was CONDITIONED to be a misfit. In pretty much every aspect of my life, I was conditioned to stand out and be different. I even feel like a misfit to my own self.

As a child, I was constantly belittled and talked down to by my father; that left me with NO confidence, and even now when I do things right, I doubt myself. In school, I had the best grades in all my classes, which of course equated to the best grades overall, which of course caused my name to be constantly in the mouths of teachers for praise and students for ridicule; and actually I even had a teacher call me Steve Urkel once, which was not cool. Even in church as a child I was a guinea pig; anything that no one else's child wanted to do, I was the minuteman. It wasn't exactly anything to be ashamed of, but you still end up being one of the few among the many, ya know? I walked funny, I had big glasses, I talked in complete sentences, I shunned worldly ways, I understood everything, I wanted to change the world... I pretty much did anything you could think of that would make a person say, "he's different". It was molded into me from the jump, and I never figured out how to "escape" it.

My reaction to it all? Withdrawal. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had and still have PLENTY of friends; like, literally hundreds. But, there came a point where I just felt that being rejected and/or praised were the only two options for me; I never figured out how to achieve that middle ground that everybody seems to fall so naturally into. So isolation, solitude, quietness became the thing for me.

But I'm not sad about it. The thing is, with that withdrawal came a sort of "embracing" of what I am. I'm a misfit; I don't always want to be, but at the same time I do. When I look at the majority, I am constantly bothered by what I see. And I realize that it's a blessing to be different. BUT, this blessing has just as much a downside of its own; most everything in life does. The downside is I can't fake being anything BUT an oddball; even when I've tried to be "normal", people that know me wouldn't allow it. "Be yourself," and all that jazz (how can you be yourself when yourself was programmed into being? Durkheim speaks again... Interesting point though: have you ever bought clothes to "stand out as an individual" without realizing those clothes were corporately manufactured with "individuals" in mind?

O_o Whoa, right?)

But again, I'm not sad. What I've found is that, though I'm still a misfit, the attitude of others toward me has changed... somewhat. It went from ridicule to uneasiness to respect. People respect that I'm different, and I've even found a few who see value in who and what I've become. And I respect them too, because I doubt I'm the only "forced misfit" in the world.

Honestly, I have NO idea where my "place" is in the world; it's a very real possibility that it hasn't been created yet. But I'm 23 years old, and to this day I've been okay without much of a place. Or maybe... I've always had a place, and the world around me is nomadic? I say that because, you see, all this time I've been developing and developing; however, there must be security and stability in order for something to develop. I dunno, nomadic vs. agrarian societies, I read about it somewhere...


Keep It Movin' B-J