I, with this, will relinquish a part of myself.
I don't really know which part that is right now, but maybe
by the end of this I will.
There aren't a tremendous number of times when you feel like
you truly belong. There are even fewer as you get older. Belonging becomes as
ambiguous as a Facebook group or an emoji in a written conversation, which
really isn’t a conversation as much as it is the feigning of significance
between two people that used to have conversations. It becomes harder because
you used to know people but your circle inevitably shrinks. Kids, job,
marriages. That could be you, maybe it is, life is built around this unshakable
string of maybes – that girl was kind, sweet, and pretty, in a conventional
sense. That guy could have been you.
But maybe.
Belonging becomes whatever we need it to be when we don’t
belong anymore to anything but ourselves standing in a kitchen full of people
that you don’t remember knowing, really knowing, like the core of what makes a
person a person rather than say, a lamp, ever.
That’s a powerful thing to understand and experience.
Maybe I'll relinquish belonging.
But I like people.
Real people.
Not empty crowded kitchens.
But maybe the problem is those two words, "feel
like." What matters more (and I'm sincerely asking because I've got no
fucking clue) the reality or how we interact with it. We label and stipulate
all of our existence. It's a constant negotiation between what we are, what we
see and what we think we are.
Who others think we are; who others prefer us to be.
