I came across a post today titled, “I Feel I Don’t Belong Anywhere – Like I’m Different and I’ll Never Find Happiness” on DearCupid. The sentiment was all too familiar. It took me back to my younger years – back when I wrestled with the same question.
I remember a time when I felt completely detached from the world around me. Ever since I started high school in 1992, a lingering sense of displacement followed me. I battled manic depression and anxiety, tried medication, met with counsellors, even saw a psychologist through City Hall. Nothing really helped, not until I met my Grade 12 counsellor, who had also been my counsellor in Grade 7. He helped, but only so much.
It wasn’t therapy that changed me. It was failure.
In my early twenties, I experienced years of success, only to fall hard at the end of it. I lost a lot – money, security, stability – but in the process, I gained something that no amount of success had ever given me: clarity.
The Outsider Looking In
Even with clarity, I never stopped feeling like an outsider. No matter where I went or who I was with, I always felt out of place – as if I had been born in the wrong time, on the wrong planet, among people whose existence was parallel to mine, but never quite aligned.
I remember one night, looking up at the sky and seeing five jet stream clouds cutting across the stars. Something inside me ached. I whispered, “Take me away with you. Take me home. I miss home.”
I didn’t know what home was, but I felt in my bones that it wasn’t here.
Maybe it was a past life, maybe just a childish fantasy, but that feeling of belonging elsewhere never truly left me.
How I Stopped Searching
I spent years trying to “fix” myself, thinking that if I just found the right people, the right purpose, the right place, maybe the feeling of alienation would disappear. But it never did.
And then one day, I stopped looking.
Instead of searching for a world that felt like mine, I started shaping the world around me. Instead of searching for “my people,” I built my own circle. Instead of waiting for a sense of belonging to find me, I became my own home.
It wasn’t easy. I was an outcast during high school, shunned by peers, ignored by most, accepted only by a handful of skaters and misfits who saw past the quiet exterior. But looking back, I realize now – I never really needed the acceptance of others.
What I needed was the acceptance of myself.
A Personal Truth
People often turn to religion to find meaning, but religion failed me. I explored different faiths, tried to embrace belief systems that promised structure, comfort, guidance. In the end, none of them aligned with my truth.
If God exists, then God does not need religion. If divinity is real, then it exists in our own ability to create meaning, to carve purpose from the chaos of existence.
I am not lost.
I am not waiting to be found.
I am here, standing on my own ground, in a world that may never feel like mine – but one that I’ve made my own.
And that, perhaps, is enough.
