The Grief of Being the Outsider
The Grief of Being the Outsider There is a particular kind of pain that comes with being the outsider. It isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it looks like being the one who doesn’t quite fit in, the one who sees things differently, the one who asks questions that make other people uncomfortable, or the one who can no longer participate in the patterns everyone else seems perfectly willing to accept. Sometimes it looks like sitting in a room full of people and realizing that, somehow, you are still alone. And sometimes the deepest grief isn’t that people don’t understand you. It’s that you finally understand that they may never will. For a long time, I thought being the outsider meant something was wrong with me. I thought maybe I was too sensitive, too intense, too aware, or simply too much. I learned to question myself before I questioned the environment I was in. I learned to make myself smaller so other people could remain comfortable. I learned to abandon parts of myself in exch...