I wonder how many people in the world feel like outsiders.
Like they don’t belong.
No two human beings are exactly the same, so you can’t help but imagine an individual’s individuality would make him feel a bit alienated sometimes.
To be specific:
- “S” hasn’t seen her real dad since she was 6 and her step dad is a hard core Christian, who won’t even let her watch “Casper the friendly Ghost” because of it’s views on the afterlife
- “C” is blind in her left eye, is dyslexic, and was molested by her cousin when she was a kid.
- “J” is short, hangs out with kids 3 years younger than him, and lots of people believe a rumor he’s gay.
Do you think these people felt like outcasts at some time or another?
Me, I’ve felt the pangs of being an outsider often in my life, and not just during the teenage “woe – is – me – the – only – person – in – the – entire – world – who – has – to – suffer” stage.
As a kid, I had a severely overactive imagination.
I would think sometimes, what if everybody around me can read my thoughts, or what if everyone can see what I’m doing at every second, like a tv screen in their minds, even when I’m going to the bathroom or picking my nose, and they sit around and talk about “hey, did you see what she did today?” and laugh. Actually, talking with a few friends recently, I found out a lot of kids have this “Truman Show” complex.
I read a lot of books growing up. Often friends would come over and end up playing Barbie with my mom upstairs while I read “The Boxcar Children” in my room. Being a bookworm naturally alienated me from the real world.
Books put me in a perpetual glazed-eye trance. Their influence made me a nerd in elementary school and a spaced-out shy girl in high school.
Curses on my local library and their summer reading program.
In tenth grade, I wrote a poem about this girl named Lorna. She and her brother Patrick were outcasts. Patrick was mentally handicapped and was either shunned, pitied or made fun of. Lorna was super smart — skipped a grade and graduated very top of the class.
And she was super super quiet.
I’ve always naturally gravitated towards fellow losers since I befriended that dinosaur-obsessed boy in kindergarten (we would play “dinosaur pirates” every recess), but even I didn’t know what to make of Lorna.
Her valedictorian speech was the most I’d ever heard from her–
Listening to her speech, I felt this horrible pit of regret in my stomach, realizing how invisible she’d been to me, this living, breathing, beautiful person.
The poem — I don’t remember much — was like an apology,
I rewrote it many times, but I think it still sounds kind of trite/ childish because of its “aa bb” rhyme scheme (and the iambic pentameter)
Here are the last two lines (title was “Invisible Girl”):
i find in the yearbook her favorite quote
and smile at the irony of what she wrote.
it said, “silence is golden” — sometimes I’d agree
but silence is mostly a burden to me.
Yeah, being a shy outcast is tough.
They’re saying lately that shyness is a disease called “avoidant personality disorder” or “social anxiety disorder.” In a way I felt like I was diseased sometimes, something was wrong with me — some alien virus that prevented me from speaking my mind in a crowd or asking the person next to me if I could borrow a piece of paper.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent, I actually started this post thinking about how being an ex-Mormon makes me an outcast in both Mormon and non-Mormon societies… ahem.
All this talk of outcasts reminds me of that song from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I read the book and man, so much different from the Disney movie.
Major differences:
-Quasimodo is deaf.
-Esmerelda is not a sexy pole-dancer, but a 15-year-old innocent girl.
-Pheobus is a player who just wants a piece of Esmerelda.
-Frolo tries to kill Pheobus and Esmerelda is blamed for the attack.
-The church accuses the gypsy girl of being a witch employed by the devil based on the evidence that her pet goat can do cool tricks. Then they hang her.
Really depressing stuff!
Disney vs. Realism… hm. I don’t know which I prefer…
1 response so far ↓
apostatejournal // June 11, 2008 at 5:50 pm |
It’s hard to feel so disconnected from others. I also spent time as a bookworm so I can understand that disconnect. Leaving mormonism is an interesting disconnect as well. I still don’t entirely feel like I fit in with the rest of society, but I definitely don’t fit in with where I came from. It’s hard to get my bearings. Good luck! You express yourself very well. In my life I have found that the disconnects I feel are usually because of some sort of silence. So many people, including myself keep what we really think and feel silent.
I also think being raised mormon leads to a need to silence and hide any part of myself that doesn’t conform to the image I am supposed to match. That also creates a sense of isolation that I am still learning to deal with and dispel through true intimacy with others. Getting to know other people without hiding myself is both exhilirating and frightening at the same time.