Belonging

me too re: not wanting to be a part of the community one finds oneself in, but needing community all the same. i deal with feeling contempt for and suspicion of the people around me (in utah) every day. they're all republicans! they're like 50 percent mormon! on the other hand, the more i strengthen relationships with the people i do care about (my boyfriend, by loving him, and a few friends on facebook by uhhh liking their posts i guess, maybe sending messages from time to time), and also tend to my needs and love myself, the more my hackles soften into detached, bemused bewilderment at the conservative way of life these people slot into.

xp i very much relate to this too:

It's the fucking worst, forming social bonds with people feels like physical pain and I have to drink to suppress the urge to escape, only I am a non drinker now so will just never meet people again I guess?

I largely feel that adulthood has been a slow, unwinding process of discovering that I am not an introvert after all, I just couldn't put myself in the extrovert environment I wanted

yeah.. most people are horrifying imo. but like i absolutely need people in my life as much as possible. they just need to not be horrifying! or like under 50% horrifying?

It's the fucking worst, forming social bonds with people feels like physical pain

I just have a horror of disappointing people. The absolute worst thing someone can say to me is "I always wanted to be friends with you because you seem cool," because I instantly think, "Oh God, they think I'm cool but they don't know me, there's nowhere to go from here but down, I can only disappoint them, best to avoid them forever."

I guess I don't feel a strong sense of belonging anywhere, but throughout my life I have had flashes of it like the chorus of Fast Car, and I value those moments greatly and treasure them in my memory.

in primary school I never really fitted in because I was a rare lad who didn't enjoy football at all and I didn't really *get* things that were big like WWF and Power Rangers. And in high school I was actively ostracized - I was a massive geek, total academic overachiever, but also I was secure in my identity enough to be openly gay for most of it. My hometown is a very insular community, a place where people seem to know everyone and everyone's business, but I didn't care because I knew I didn't fit in and I knew I wasn't planning to stay long at all. I had a group of pals in high school but it wasn't a natural fit - we sat together at lunch because we didn't feel welcome to sit with anyone else. I didn't do myself any favours by being defensive to the point of antagonism but if you're going to be this fabulous in a west of Scotland high school you need to be tough in specific way. At my high school leavers dance one of the more popular guys came up to me and asked why I acted like I was above it all and better than everyone and it was a revelation because it was absolutely not how I had experienced it: six years of being called a poof, why would I feel welcome around these people?

I started uni and it was completely different. I don't think I changed the way I was, it wasn't like when Lisa Simpson goes to the beach with new clothes and hip slang. I just spoke to everyone and tried to be like myself, and suddenly I was... popular? I was nominated to be the class rep because people had faith in me, and I was invited on nights out and lunch breaks, and it was totally different because I had spent most of high school in my room listening to music. BUT I still didn't really belong. We did the activities they wanted to do as a collective. Terrible clubs playing music I didn't like, house parties full of weed when I hate the stuff, chats about the cinema when I never go. I wish I'd had the confidence to pull back, to say that it wasn't for me, to go to do my own thing and try to meet people who were more on my wavelength - but I liked being part of a group.

After graduating I gave up drinking for six months, and I realised that so much of my life was framed around getting drunk with people for fun rather than sharing their company for fun. When you're the only sober one on a night out, and you're already not enjoying that night out, you see things differently. I was using dating apps and the internet generally to find people more like myself and do things with those people that I actually wanted to do, albeit with a low strike rate. A few months later I fell into a major depression, proper not-leaving-the-house stuff. I let a lot of people down, they let me down. Everyone I was pals with from uni and the few I had from school, went from being good friends to social media acquaintances.

I lucked out in my late 20s. I got a job where I met some of the nicest, kindest, warmest people I could ever hope to work with, and despite the fact you shouldn't fill your friendships with colleagues I ended up with some great people in my life because of it, and crucially these people have always made me feel like they want to have me around. I also met my boyfriend. Now when a gig or an event comes up I want to go to, I don't have to say "please can we go to this thing?" because he already wants to go, and that's a huge comfort when you're otherwise trying to persuade someone to come to something more esoteric. And I met some amazing people at an afterparty - the kind of situation where you're best pals for a night and never see them again, except these people wanted to see me and I wanted to see them, and now we've become a friend group that goes on holiday together.

I think my generation still feels a sense of shame and embarassment about online communities. I think there's still a thing around online dating for people my age: everybody does it, but nobody really wants to admit it, despite the fact it makes more sense as a method than hoping that cute guy at the bar turns out to be single, interested, and not completely awful. I love being part of something like ILX: I get to chat about music that people in my everyday life wouldn't be interested in, and in a way that they would probably find boring and excessive. For example: I told everyone I know about Susanne Sundfor's "Ten Love Songs" and nobody really cared, whereas here people were willing to embrace it. Why wouldn't I want to self-select to attempt to enter a community that I have mutual interests and tastes with?

I think there's still a holdover of the idea that people who use forums and music groups are sad loners, the stereotype of the 90s basement dweller geek. But if you use Twitter and Facebook to chat around subject hashtags it's not any different, really, and I think to keep up with online identities and topics you need to be sociable in a digital way.

tl;dr - I'd rather belong to an online community that would have me and feel a belonging there, than an in-person one that I feel zero affinity with.

At my high school leavers dance one of the more popular guys came up to me and asked why I acted like I was above it all and better than everyone and it was a revelation because it was absolutely not how I had experienced it

I was also told this a few times in my teens, when I was ostracised, friendless and massively under-confident, and I couldn't understand why I came across like that. But I lived in a small place, with small-minded people, and I knew that I had to escape at the earliest opportunity. Which I did.

I've always had a strong feeling of being an outsider likely due to my early upbringing:

1. I grew up in an evangelical christian church that thought the end times were nigh and the world was corrupt. This drove strong feelings of division: belonging within the church and isolation from the outside world. The sense of community was amazing but also like a cult.

2. My father was culturally jewish and despite #1, we also went to synagogue on high holidays, kept kosher at passover, etc. There were not that many jews where I grew up, so this heightened the sense of isolation from the general community and even from others in our church.

3. Even though we grew up in a "conservative" environment, my parents were former hippies and my father was an artist and to some extent an iconoclast. This set us apart from some in the church environment as well as non-church people we knew who had more "normal" jobs and backgrounds.

These lessons (and my own narcissism) probably drove me to self-selection as an outsider long after the above stopped directly affecting my life. The few friendships I had were all with people I had met in high school/college/law school, all of whom lived 3 hours away, and I didn't make any new friends for nearly 15 years. I was torn between a strong desire for connection/belonging/wider friendships but really unable or unwilling to make them happen.

About 7-8 years ago I finally started making an effort to connect with a guy I had known for a couple years casually through a weekend sport activity. We hit it off and that friendship in turn led my wife and I to a number of friendships with other people in our local community, which has made our lives much richer.

TLDR (and obvious); friendships require work. You are not so amazing that people will beat your door down to find you. You have to put yourself out there.

Great replies so far – thanks, all.

Solidarity with everyone from conservative, closed-minded, insular, isolated places. I wonder all the time about the profound difference the internet makes/has made for people, especially young people. I experienced so much isolation and loneliness for being slightly different in my stupid town (I blame my parents, who were Not From There), and then while I was in college, the internet blew my mind as I was suddenly bffs with likeminded ppl from all over the world. <3 <3

it was a revelation because it was absolutely not how I had experienced it: six years of being called a poof, why would I feel welcome around these people?

I experienced this too. Like...you tortured me for literally years, every day. Don't think I wouldn't happily watch you drown--be glad I'm happy to just leave here and never come back.

Given that we moved every 6-12 months on average while I was growing up, I was already inclined to think of friendships and associations in general as temporary, but I think the first two years of high school were probably the most formative inasmuch as we lived in almost literally the middle of nowhere (in military housing, a 10-15 minute drive to the gate (I was too young to drive) and then another 45 minute drive to anything resembling civilization (again, did not drive) with no one my age around the base, went to a rural shitheel school in a completely different town really effing far away). I pretty much had to learn to be okay with entertaining myself. And then it kind of became my default. Which is not to say that it's been my only mode, just the one I've tended to drift back to over and over again. The people in my life who have stuck around accept that I tend to spend an inordinate amount of time up my own ass and understand that it isn't personal. But I understand that many people don't have patience for that. Which I understand is an impediment to feeling like I belong and which I accept is my problem to solve if I ever really want to feel like I belong but I'm also in my forties now so how much can I really expect to change at this point, is the thing.

grew up the only black/mixed race kid in a small village, only one in primary school and when i got to secondary school in the town next door i was the only one in my year group. there were a pair of black twins in their final year but that was it. i have no way of knowing whether my sense of not belonging came from this or if it's just the way things are with me, a general sense of low key wariness when around people. otoh although i am in no way patriotic and don't support the England national team i have always felt English and am not conflicted in that at all.

as for other areas of belonging, the only groups or clubs i've been part of are the village football team which went fine and the artisan section of the local golf club which i've been a member of since i was 10 where for reduced membership fees in comparison to the main members(who were actually commonly referred to as the 'toffs' back in the day) you have to do work on the golf course 4 times a year. so i'm a member of this club but hadn't played with another person for over 20 years until post covid protocols meant a reduced number of tee times and i finally met some of the other members, but still prefer going solo.

apart from a year at university in London(hated it) i've spent the rest of my life in the same village and contrary to the small town experiences of other ilxors i've found privacy and anonymity p easy. the people who lived in the other half of my semi detached house lived there for 5 years without me knowing their names or they mine, and when they moved out the new neighbours have been there for 2 years and i don't know their names either. the stereotype of all villages knowing everybody else's business certainly not true here.

so i guess i'm a loner but who knows why or cares, it's the state of being that makes me calmest and happiest.

my knee-jerk response to this question is that i don’t belong, except maybe to my nuclear family? (mother and sisters) it would probably be more accurate to say that I have tried to belong in a series of larger communities that i ended up in (social circles at school (all the way up through grad school—I think I tried hardest to fit in in grad school) the ethnic community I was born into, fellow English teachers). I have historically made some headway and then reached a point where I felt pretty alienated for one reason or another. This suggests that the difficulty in belonging is in me.

I would also say that I think I’m fine with this, or as fine as it’s possible to be. I’ve always had people I loved who loved me. I remember talking to my youngest sister once about her decision to move to India for some years in her 20s and 30s. She indicated that part of her impulse was a feeling that she had never found “her people” in America. I remember feeling startled at the idea that one could—I certainly haven’t either.

I feel like this sounds so dramatic, but I don’t think it is. I just think I’m kind of ornery and sensitive to difference.

but also there are communities I identify with in an imaginary way and feel committed to advocating for...Muslim women, teachers, nonwhite people in a variety of contexts. Doesn’t mean I’m good at making and staying friends with others in those communities, but imaginary identification is easier!

I lucked out in my late 20s. I got a job where I met some of the nicest, kindest, warmest people I could ever hope to work with, and despite the fact you shouldn't fill your friendships with colleagues I ended up with some great people in my life because of it, and crucially these people have always made me feel like they want to have me around. I also met my boyfriend. Now when a gig or an event comes up I want to go to, I don't have to say "please can we go to this thing?" because he already wants to go, and that's a huge comfort when you're otherwise trying to persuade someone to come to something more esoteric. And I met some amazing people at an afterparty - the kind of situation where you're best pals for a night and never see them again, except these people wanted to see me and I wanted to see them, and now we've become a friend group that goes on holiday together.

just wanted to say this made me happy to read and it's definitely something i've experienced a little of and hope to experience more of, because the connections i've made under circumstances like this never lasted.

oh don't get me wrong - I've been to many an afters where I've been immediate pals with people for a few hours, had them on Facebook a few months and then never seen or heard from them again. I've worked with teams of 30-40 people and found nobody I would ever invite into my home. And I did a lot of first dates in my teens and early 20s, although there's probably different things to be said about that. Like I say - lucked out.

I've always found it quite amazing that very like-minded people manage to meet, when I was younger I had a fascination for that part of bands and art scenes having people who managed to find each other. But I've discovered that a lot of those people were also very different and often didn't care for each other much.

I don't imagine I'll ever find many people in travelling distance whose company I crave, it just seems like a vanishingly small number of people I want to be with for very long; sometimes email, forums and blogs seems like the ideal kind of friendship but occasionally I miss speaking with friends in person. The idea of a future without workable internet seems completely horrifying, I wonder if people would travel more again to meet others like themselves.

All my real life friends (apart from my brother, sister and her boyfriend) have drifted away. I've only met up with a friend 2 or 3 times in the past 5 years and it has been surprisingly fine, I only miss one or two of them a little. I find the longer I am alone, the easier it gets.

There were some friends who I puzzled over why they wanted my company (not in a self-deprecating way) and I'm not surprised they drifted away but I am still a tad annoyed that I made so much effort to keep up with them and most of them made so little for me. I wish they had told me that they had other priorities now (understandable) and saved me the bother. But I know they liked me enough that maybe they were worried about hurting my feelings.

I think any really meaningful friendships I'm ever going to have will come from working at my art, which takes for-goddamned-ever. My best online friend came through that.

Sweet thread. Funny to see a couple of ..

At my high school leavers dance one of the more popular guys came up to me and asked why I acted like I was above it all and better than everyone and it was a revelation because it was absolutely not how I had experienced it

I remember getting this from one of the younger teachers but like put in a positive way. It was still weird to hear. All I can think is that when you're shit on constantly, just being able to walk around appears defiant to people who don't experience that. It's funny. What else can you do, cower in a corner until graduation?

Heaven forfend you should think yourself better than people you already implicitly understand will peak in high school.

couldn't really grasp that then, lol

high school the ideal time to peak imo

young dumb and full of cum

the truth is, i wish i could have peaked in high school, but that would have required that high school be replaced with the anvil

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nrX-GZCnYxU/maxresdefault.jpg

I'm still waiting to hit any kind of peak tbh

ime, and genuinely not to discount experience itt or elsewhere, talk of peaks in that way is a road to toxic thoughts

All I can think is that when you're shit on constantly, just being able to walk around appears defiant to people who don't experience that. It's funny. What else can you do, cower in a corner until graduation?

Yeah cf also the people who said, "I wish I could be like you, you don't care what anyone says," knowing a) what it was costing me privately, and also b) if someone wants to hurt you WHY TF WOULD YOU SHOW THEM IT'S WORKING? Duh.

Man we have a lot of hurt to work through. I'm glad we all turned out to be such well balanced high-functioning people who found each other on the internet!! Truly.

xp otm

Was all this bullying their misguided way of trying to make friends? Or did they just gradually realize they wanted your company?

family issues aside, i never really put too much weight on the fact that i hang out or spend time with various groups, some of which would probably not hang out with each other.

i do have a small tight-knit circle of friends i've known for twenty years or so now. they're probably the people i can relax with the most and be more honest with. but we're also, for the most part, more "like-minded," which sounds hippy-dippy, but it's true!

having said all that, it's all pushed me to compartmentalize my thoughts and life more than i'd want. so when another circle of acquaintances finds out something about me that seems left of centre for that group, they become intrigued. but given the context, it's hard to really gauge whether this is something that i should share more of, because some human interaction is just plain difficult and some people are just hard to read. i'd rather keep it to what brings us together when in these circles.

xp I think it's more for a lot of people they didn't realise how impactful their words etc had been and didn't like the idea of someone harbouring bitterness towards them.

1. I grew up in an evangelical christian church that thought the end times were nigh and the world was corrupt. This drove strong feelings of division: belonging within the church and isolation from the outside world. The sense of community was amazing but also like a cult.

2. My father was culturally jewish and despite #1, we also went to synagogue on high holidays, kept kosher at passover, etc. There were not that many jews where I grew up, so this heightened the sense of isolation from the general community and even from others in our church.

― perhaps I myself was the object of my search (PBKR), Friday, March 5, 2021 7:29 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am absolutely serious when I say you could sell a book proposal about this in about half a second.