I have been thinking a lot about how I don’t feel as if I belong anywhere. I look at social media and the things people say or do, they aren’t me or things I want to say or do. I see there is a balance in how much I post and reveal to people so I can’t waste the little sort of “space” I have to share on things that don’t feel worthy to me. Then as I peer back on my life I can see that there was a time when fitting in was so important. Yet as I entered my teens years, I found myself on a bit of a path alone, finding what interested me and sticking to that rather than what helped me “be” like everyone else.
This continued into adulthood and I can remember my mom saying that she wasn’t sure where I came from, that I was different from the rest of the family. “You’re of a different branch,” she often said. This was never said in a negative way– my mom was the most supportive mom one could have, something I can’t say I entirely appreciated (and what often makes it harder that she’s not here now although I know she is with me, yet in a different way).
In recent years, my feeling that time has short has intensified and I find I don’t want to waste my time on what doesn’t feel like it adds anything to my life, kind of like those social media trends. I have tried to hold steady to what I want to do, what brings me joy, and what I believe I’m here to contribute.
That also puts me at odds with belonging.
After taking six planes in the last week, I had some time to reflect on this and I realized that the people in this world who want to contribute something on a bigger scale, they often sit as outliers outside the circle. They know they have something to share or do, but staying inside the circle isn’t often the way to make it happen. They have to carve out their place, or build this from scratch.
I feel like one of those people. I sit on the outside (or one might say I’m running around the outside of the circle) and look to see how I can create what it is that I want. In areas where I haven’t been supported on a large scale– getting an agent or my books published, so I went and did it on my own. It’s been hard to get people interested in various segments of Chelle Summer because they don’t believe I “fit” with what they are looking for.
Instead, I have to build what I want. The good news (for me!) is that figuring this out has helped me begin to shed doors I’ve kept open and need now to be closed. There are a lot of supportive people out there and I’m not going to keep trying to get some people interested in what I can see they don’t appreciate or understand.
Life is too short to keep giving energy to doors that are letting good energy dissipate when there are doors to open that will help it blossom.