Scattered

I seem to understand core issues surrounding my social unease, yet I still fail to see how my better understanding can help in any way.

The same sorts of themes have been dancing in my head these past few weeks - that of not fitting in, and the endless wondering as to why.

But I do know why. There is nowhere I can actually go where I would readily 'belong'. One way or another, no matter where I go, I will be reminded of my 'hybrid' status. What I mean is that even though I was born in one country and grew up immersed in its culture and language, I was always made to feel as though I wasn't 'really' from there due to my foreign surname. Yet my parents never taught me their native language, making me today as much of a foreigner in their home country.

Today I find myself living in yet another country where my accent always gives away the fact that I am, again, an outsider.

I look in the mirror and I see the dark hair, dark eyes and features of someone far more Mediterranean than the part of my family I happen to know, reminding me that there is a whole half of me in terms of origins that is from yet somewhere else.

I effectively ended up in a situation where I have no roots as such. It's like standing with your feet on either side of a chasm, with no means of choosing one side or the other. The notion of origins for me has taken such an abstract and alien one for my person that yes, I shouldn't be surprised to find myself struggling to fit in anywhere in particular.

This led me to reflect on the few social bonds I've managed to form over the past decade or so, and the fact is that 99% of the time, the type of people I 'fit in' with are either misfits for one reason or other, or they, like me, have been drifting away from their native land and origins for a while. I get on with them because suddenly we're on the same sort of wavelength.  Our situations might differ - or rather the detail as to why we don't fit in differs -  but we can bond over the fact that we understand this basic lack of 'fitting in'... this missing link, somewhere, that ends up allowing for an actual connection.

Trying to interact with 'natives' - in whichever country - is like talking to someone standing on the other side of a glass wall. We can interact, but we won't understand each other. They won't understand why I ended up the strange way I appear to them, and I won't understand what comes across to me as mind limitation from them. By natives, I suppose I mean most - but not all - people who spend their lives in the same country speaking that country's native language. Anyone secure in their sense of origins or who comfortably belongs.

So I know why I feel out of place, because I've been made to feel so since I was little and started going to school. There was always something 'different' to emphasise about me...

I know and understand these factors in my existence that led me from point A to point B, yet I can't see how to make peace with it. Maybe that's something only time and self-acceptance can do in this particular case.