Everyone knows something about
what it feels like to not belong.
When we find ourselves in unfamiliar
places or among people we don’t
know, we usually feel a little uncomfortable.
But these experiences only happen occasionally
and, with time, we can overcome that isolated
feeling. For some people, however, the exper-
ience of not belonging is an everyday occurrence
and that alienated feeling never completely goes
away.
The story that we hear being
told is of one such person:
Elizabeth (a pseudonym).
The text is mine but both the
spoken words and the illustrations
are hers.
Click the pictures along the left side to hear excerpts from Elizabeth's
story. They are in a rough temporal order with the stories from her
early life at the top. My own commentary will appear here.
Elizabeth had always experienced herself as isolated from
others. Even in her early life some social encounters were
both awkward and painful. These experiences were
accompanied by both self-doubt and self-isolation. But
Elizabeth also reacted against her self-doubt with a strong
desire to show her worth.
Elizabeth's Early
Childhood
For most of us, adolescence is a time when belonging
matters perhaps more than at any other time in our lives
and Elizabeth was no exception. The stories from this time
of her life show the powerful emotions associated with not
belonging, emotions that extended into her embodied
experience.
Elizabeth's
Adolescence
Just as the transition to adulthood seems to moderate the
extreme emotions of adolescence, for Elizabeth, growing
up changed how she experienced not belonging. She
didn't belong any more as an adult than she had as an
adolescent, but that not belonging just didn't seem to
matter as much, or at least not in the same way. She
became much more resigned but also more comfortable
with her differences.
Though Elizabeth's sense of not belonging never really
went away, her perspective changed in a fairly profound
way. The dramatic and painful emotions that accompanied
her adolescent experience gave way to resignation,
acceptance, and even a kind of self-affirmation. She
did not suddenly fit in upon becoming an adult, but she
did find a way to live with and through her isolation.
