One of the things I have struggled with most in my life is loneliness. It started when I was a little kid. I was homeschooled and we didn't have a car so we never got to attend events with our home school group. I did have my sister and a couple kids to play with in the neighbourhood. My church had like no youth group or anything during the week. There was Sunday school but there weren't really any other kids my age at my church. Everyone was younger or older. I blame my mum for wishing that if she ever got pregnant again no one would be pregnant at the same time because she hated the competitive comparisons: "my baby sleeps through the night" "my baby is already walking" "my baby said mommy" "my baby goes pee pee in the potty" "blah blah blah," It is all well and good that she wanted me to be able to grow up at my own pace, but I would have liked some company.
The other problem was that I have always been a little odd. For starters I am extremely emotional. You may think that now I get angry or sad way too easy and take it way too seriously when I don't understand, but you should have seen me when I was a kid. I have issues with emotions. I get that and I've been working my whole life at learning how to express them appropriately.
It seems to me like my quirks just grew as I grew.
I spent so much time alone as a kid that I started to become my own person. I didn't spend enough time around other people to learn how to change myself in accordance with the likes, interests, and behaviors of those around me. This is a good thing, I think. It means I never really experienced not knowing who I am. I've always struggled to figure out how I fit in the world, but I've always known who I am because I have never had a chance to be anyone but me.
It's funny because everyone always says "be yourself" and people always talk about the tragedy of not knowing who you are, but here I am being myself and no one ever knows what to think of it.
An interesting lesson I learned in high school (when I finally started public school in grade nine) is that patients are very useful. When I began high school no one really liked me. I made friends very slowly and I drove a lot of people crazy, for good reason. It wasn't just that I was weird. I was also very annoying because I was really stressed out by all the changes and hadn't figured out how to deal with my emotions. With time, however, a surprising majority of the people in my school warmed up to me and I even made a couple good friends. It was funny to watch. I might have matured a little, but not very much. It was the others who changed. They got used to me, and they began to understand me, and they decided they liked me. I still don't really understand it.
It makes short events like summer jobs, summer school, and camps really hard for me because people don't have enough time to get used to me and get to know me.
I've been told many times that I should just be happy for the friends I do have and I should learn to be happy inside of myself in a way that doesn't depend on my surroundings.
This is all well and good, but oh so much harder to do then to say.
The funny thing is that these days it doesn't actually bother me to be alone, but it bothers me that no one wants to hang out with me.
When I was a kid I was a naturally social person, but after all the difficulty that this caused me I started spending more and more time alone. I didn't really like to play alone but I loved to read alone. I also really loved repetitive actions like raking, sweeping, digging holes, scootering, rollerblading, and biking. I would entertain myself for hours on end with these activities, and this is how I became little miss analytical Laurissa. I had nothing to do with my life, so I thought about stuff. I learned to love this way of life, and now I need some time to myself to think or read and just let my brain be quieted. However, I still long for that true sense of belonging. I've almost tasted it a few times but not really. I like being alone, but I also want to belong. I've always been the weird one that people grow to love but never really welcome into the gang.
I know my self worth doesn't come from belonging, but longing for it is an emotion that I just can't let go of.
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