Alone,
But as children, we don’t really understand or notice.
I still don’t understand it.
Why does it happen?
It’s not like I was bullied or that they didn’t like me specifically
More that I was invisible.
I didn’t know where I stood; sand shifted beneath my bare feet.
I was stuck inside the image of a little girl
The tall one with shy eyes.
As years passed, the little girl changed and grew
But no one seemed to notice that she was different from before.
I was so lonely then.
Classmates went on with their lives, had their fun together, left her behind.
She was the quiet, studious one in their minds,
But really, all she wanted was to know she wasn’t alone.
I spent time with these people every day for nine years, and yet…
And yet I still managed to get left behind in the depth of my thoughts, while they developed lifelong connections.
I don’t know what makes such things happen…
Is it lack of confidence? Lack of courage? Lack of initiative?
I ask myself now.
At the time, I simply wondered
What was wrong with me.

More years passed
Here and there, I found a friend.
But I was still alone because I couldn’t share my thoughts and feelings with them; they couldn’t relate to me
So I couldn’t be as I longed to be, even though at the time, I wasn’t sure what that was like.
For so long, I thought I knew who I was.
But I didn’t.
Not really.
My identity flopped around like a fish out of water
As I tried to find my place in the world
As I tried to find myself.

I tried to lose myself in books.
Maybe I thought that the stories would help me to know that I wasn’t really alone;
That I wasn’t insane.
Wanting to fit in isn’t the same as wanting to know you aren’t alone.
But I didn’t know how to separate the two.
The girl tried many things.
But nothing seemed to work.
She was unable to change her inner opinions and morals to match theirs.
She just wasn’t like them.
She didn’t like the same music as they did, she didn’t like shopping, she didn’t watch TV
She knew she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever be like them.
She loved to travel, she loved nature, she loved to read…
But I do not think she was sure if
She loved herself.

So I was different.
Being different isn’t bad
Unique.
It is a good thing.
But at that time in my life when I was wandering through a desert of unsureness and self-doubt,
It was a hard thing to realize.
So I was a lone wolf, wise beyond her years, trying to find acceptance and understanding in her pack.
I never found it there.

Unconsciously, I wasn’t myself for many years.
Not really.
Rare were the times I spoke out
Rare were the times I chose to make decisions; decisions that might have been judged or disliked by the pack.
And rare were the times
I felt that I was truly a part of something.
Instead, I felt apart from something…
Although there are happy memories
The loneliness was definite…
but thankfully, it was finite.
Still I scrambled to get my footing upon the shifting sands of my life.
I couldn’t figure out where I could possibly belong.
The chafing of my self-doubt made everything worse.

Despite the reassurance from the deep hearts of older, more experienced veterans of that thing we call loneliness,
I was very lost and confused.
Perhaps I could have taken my situation and molded it like wet sand into something else, Something better.
But I was scared
I wasn’t brave enough
And I couldn’t change myself for anything or anyone.

It isn’t just fairy tales that are allowed to have
Happy endings.
For, as I said, my loneliness was finite.
Three years ago, the sands shifted.
And I could finally stand up
Without losing
My footing
Without losing confidence in myself.
I don’t know
How it happened.
I was sick of always being a follower.
I wanted to make my own foot prints in fresh snow.
So I stepped off the conveyer belt of the vast majority
And allowed the river to carry me to where I was supposed to be.
Finally.
I am happy
I am me
And I am free!