Don’t Fit In? Feel Out of Place?
I find a lot of people go through life feeling like they don’t fit in, or that there is just something a little off about them. I was that same way. I remember the first time I felt like I didn’t belong, or that something was different about me.
I’ve been there!
I grew up in West Texas, and I was a really heavy set kid. Like kids do in the summer time, we’d be out playing around in the sprinkler system and hose, in swimsuits, without shirts on, and I remember we would run around for a while and then congregate over at my buddy’s patio out at the front of his house. It was him and his brother, and they kind of had the cool house. Plus they had the cool, hot, older sister. So, you know, here are a bunch of kids that are 10 or 11 years old, then there is that 13 year old girl that doesn’t talk or pay any attention to us, and we want to be around just to smile at her, I guess.
So we’re all sitting out in front of his patio playing with Garbage Pail Kids, if that tells you my age. We’re playing, and all of a sudden I can feel someone walking towards the storm door that I was sitting right underneath. It was the hot older sister. It was weird, because she walked up to the edge of the door, which you could see through, looked down at me, and she put her fingers up like she was measuring something. She looked for a second, walked inside and sat back down on the couch with her parents, and they all kind of chuckled.
“I can’t imagine a parent being a part of something like that…”
My buddy ran inside to get something, and when he came back out, in front of me and all of my friends, proceeded to tell me what she was doing was coming to the edge of the door to look down and see how big my fat little man-boobs were. Her and her parents had been having this conversation about the fat kid sitting outside the door and, “oh my gosh, how big are that kid’s boobs.”
I can’t imagine a parent being a part of something like that, but obviously all my friends got a big laugh out of it. It was pretty humiliating, and pretty devastating. All of a sudden I felt so isolated and different.
Being Different is OK. Help Spread the Word!
That started a long chain of me feeling out of place. So, I understand when somebody says they don’t feel like they belong or they don’t know if they quite fit in. It’s my passion, and I feel like it’s my drive, to take all the misfit toys – all of us – and show that our story has power. The thing we think makes us different is the thing that somebody else needs to hear about so they know they’re not alone. It can give them hope and encourage them.
I just want to encourage everyone to share your story. Share that thing you may be ashamed of right now. It may actually give somebody else hope, and hopefully my story helps someone else know they aren’t alone.
Find the motivation you need.
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