Being Left Out

I don't like being left out. It makes me feel like I can't be "one of them." It sends the message that I don't fit anywhere. One of my biggest lifelong goals is to find a good group of people that accept me for everything I am, and that I welcome for everything they are. And when I say everything, I mean everything. All the best traits, but also all the negative baggage.

When I was a kid, my two best friends, whom for the purpose of this article we will call A and K, would seemingly leave me out of things always. It made me feel sad, and this had happened from when I was a kid all the way up until we all graduated high school and went on to our separate colleges and universities. Childhood is when you some of the more basic ropes of life, and you can also know who your friends are, who is right and who is not. Being left out all the time as a kid left a massive mark on me, and it might be one of the reasons that I feel so clingy now as an adult. I need the trust of other people that they will not leave me and that I will not be left out.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around why precisely A and K left me out of things all the time growing up. Yeah, A lived much closer to me than K, but that didn’t really mean much because my parents didn’t really let me have a social life as a kid – at least not an independent one. It could also be the fact that these girls’ birthdays are within a week of each other, and mine is two months after that. A third concept could be religion. Both A and K attended church, and I did not. That’s just how I was raised.

All of this brings me back around to today. Today, I am in college, and my roommates are these two girls, whom for the purpose of this article, again, we will call L and S. L and S only knew each other for a few days before I got there and met them. When the fall semester started, we did a lot of things together. However, as the semester went on, they started doing more and more things together without me. I think this is because I had a job at the time, so I didn’t necessarily have the most enormous amount of free time on my hands. When I brought it up with L and S, L told me that the reason that she and S spend more time together is because they have a class together and that, in her words, “it was all just an act of coincidence,” but I’m not sure if I necessarily believe them, because they both said they would try to be more inclusive to me, but it still has yet to occur.

Because of all of this, I have concluded that I am just destined to be left out. I stick out like a sore thumb. I study political science, sustainability, and communications in college, so I have a weird and wacky schedule when it comes to classes and work indeed doesn’t help that because I’m an adult with bills that don’t pay themselves (yet). I’m not religious, like seemingly everyone around me. My birthday doesn’t really do anything because I don’t really share it with anyone – not even close. I’m still trying to learn to deal with this, but childhood somehow didn’t teach me that. I have to find that out by myself as an adult, and it can be hard sometimes, but if you’re feeling how I am, just know that I am here for you, and as long as you accept me for everything I am, I welcome you for everything you are.