I remember that day as clear as if it were now
You, sending me to camp
Telling me to be good
Play nice
Make friends
Fit in.
Like fitting in was the goal, the entire purpose to the summer
Forget learning to ride a horse
Make a craft
Pay attention to the beauty that is around you
Just
FIT IN
I came back from camp a failure,
unsure why “fitting in” was so important
Especially given the very tiny chance
of ever seeing those campers again
Would, in fact, be unlikely to even be remembered
Yeah, that one kid- he just seemed to “fit in”
And it made me
Sad
Not for me! For YOU!
Suddenly I understood why your shoulders perpetually
drooped at the end of the day
Why you dreaded to go to work
Why your hair was turning gray at only 35
You were still trying to “fit in”
Trying to find your “you” shaped space
in a world so fractured and broken
That you’d need to break off pieces of yourself
Just to come close to “fitting”
And I knew, in that moment
That I would never “fit in”
I would never accept a world that broke me,
that was not content to accept room for me
As me
Because why should I be the one
To give up my self
To break off pieces
Losing them, losing
Me
To try and find a spot in a world that didn’t want me?
How much better to choose instead
A me that the world wanted
A me the world would make room for
A me the world would watch and know
Deep down
That it would never fit in with me.
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