I want to share an excerpt I wrote years ago for a now-abandoned book titled Notes to My Younger Self. I wanted my younger self to understand why she felt out of place in spaces that were meant to feel like home. I didn’t have the language for it then, only the confusing experience of not belonging.
It wasn’t until many years later that I gained clarity on why I never felt as though I fit in anywhere.
Excerpt:
“You’re going to have a hard time fitting in anywhere. Whether it’s the Armenian community, the queer community, the spiritual community, with other writers, musicians, or creatives, you’re not going to feel like you belong to any group.
It’s mostly because you don’t like being defined by one characteristic. You see yourself as a whole person with many aspects, and you don’t want to limit yourself to one attribute. You feel like you disappear when you step into those communities. And you’re tired of disappearing.
If you’re a queer person and you step into the queer community, you disappear. You are now another face in the crowd, and you don’t want to be another face in the crowd. You want to be you beyond labels.
The same is true for every community you have tried to enter. As soon as you match their sameness, you feel like you disappear. You think you’re supposed to be just like them, and you don’t want to be just like anyone.
But maybe you’re not supposed to be like them. Maybe you’re meant to be yourself in those communities. You’re meant to expand those communities through your unique or contrasting characteristics. Maybe you’re meant to be a queer person in the Armenian community and an Armenian in the writing community.
Maybe you’re meant to highlight your difference within those communities, not your sameness. Maybe that’s how communities grow and expand, not through those who are the same, but through those who are different among them.
Being an Armenian writer is certainly different than being an American one. It brings a unique perspective that isn’t widely available. Being a queer Armenian is certainly different than being a straight one. It also brings a unique perspective that isn’t widely available within that community.
Perhaps then your role is not to disappear into the sameness of any group. Maybe you don’t fit into anyone else’s tribe because you were meant to lead your own. Perhaps you can’t adapt to other people’s systems or find your place within their communities because you’re here to establish your own. Maybe you weren’t made to comply and adapt, you were made to create and trailblaze.
Or maybe you were made to disrupt the status quo, to educate, to help people grow by offering another perspective. To help them see things differently. To offer an alternative to the way things have always been. Not everyone will like you for doing that, but that’s okay. You weren’t created to be liked. If you were, you would fit in easily.
There’s a part of you that feels this truth on a deep level, but you don’t quite understand it yet. It will take some time, but you will see it clearly one day.
And when you do, all of humanity will open up for you. Not just particular cultures, religions, or subsections, but everyone. You will see yourself as a catalyst. You will know your place in life, in humanity. And you will discover that you, in fact, belong everywhere.”
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