Fitting In

I've been laying here thinkibg about fitting in. As long as I can remember I have not felt that I fit in anywhere. It used to cause me a great deal of distress but these days I have mostly come to terms with it.

Some of my earliest memories are of me and a few other children playing in the park next to my house when I was around five. It never ceased to amaze me that those other kids knew some secret unspoken language and a set of rules for interacting that I was clueless about.
In middle and high school I had a couple of home base friends but I flitted from group to group trying to determine my perfect fit. When I was hanging with the brainy kids I got restless and bored with the seemingly never ending academic conversations. On the other hand when I hung out with the kids who had more antics and less inclination towards academics I got bored with the lack of mental stimulation and slightly horrified by some of their antics.

In my early twenties I thought I had found my place in the church community although I never fully felt as though I should be there. Everyone else had the balance of church life and home life down whereas I struggled with questions of faith and proper behavior.

The stay at home mother crown never did it for me either as I was not enthralled with my role as mother to the degree they seemed to be. Wanting to have a life that did not revolve around the children was not looked upon kindly.

With my second husband I made several friends but still had that feeling of not quite being in step.

Meeting Das did a lot to make me feel grounded. I realize that at least part of the root of my discomfort was my desire for a specific kind of intimate relationship that I had not even clarified in my own mind before then. However I still didn't feel 100% like a kinkster. Indeed at times I felt a total fraud since my focus was on my relationship not the more obvious topping/bottoming physical stuff.

To this day I have my friends that I love dearly but I have accepted that the very traits that make me an introvert also keep me on the outskirts. Maybe I never learned that secret language as a kid because I was too busy reading and creating a rich internal world where Barbie could fly and faeries where real. Maybe I am actually just wired slightly differently than most. My suspicion is though that those who look like they are gliding through have the same feelings of displacement that I have to varying degrees.

Does anyone really ever fit in completely anywhere? Maybe I'd we changed the expectations of having "our group" we could fully tap into the joy of being a bee gathering nectar in likely and unlikely flowers. We really don't have to fit in we simply have to have the courage to be vulnerable and let each other in.