Belonging

For much of my life I have felt like an outsider, like I didn’t belong to the human race. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to imagine myself floating in outer space, alone in the darkness, seeing stars and planets in the distance. There would be no denying the mystery of existence; I would know I existed because I would be alone, undeniably alone, and that would feel real. Whereas being with people did not feel real to me. I wasn’t sure I existed when I was around people, as if they couldn’t see me. And because I was afraid of other people, I found it easier just to imagine being alone with no one to contradict that reality. Unconsciously, I didn’t think I mattered, not to myself, not to others. I felt safe in my solitary confinement because no one could deny I didn’t belong; there was nothing to belong to. It was easier that way, to think I and other people didn’t exist.

Growing up, I related to the Twilight Zone episode where the little girl falls into the wall and gets lost and wanders around alone, separated from everyone. I hated that feeling, yet knew no way out of it, just like the little girl in the episode. But unlike her, no one came to rescue me and I stayed in that lonely place for decades. That belief that I was isolated and alone instructed my day-to-day interactions with people. I never felt as if I truly belonged anywhere. Everyone else was a member of this club to which I had no membership.

How wonderful to finally believe, in my late fifties, that that I wasn’t alone, that I did belong to the club of humanity, and that I wasn’t crazy. How wonderful to discover others like me who felt this way, also. I didn’t feel isolated anymore. I didn’t feel crazy. I felt normal, like I belonged. I was just fine.

Before I found my people with whom I could feel whole and sane, for about a year or two in my mid-fifties I couldn’t look anyone in the face. The terror of otherness floated to the surface. When I looked at someone it was as if I would look straight into that person’s soul and see their otherness and I and they would freak out. The person would return my paranoia with their eyes. It was as if I had violated them with my intimate stare. In-to-me-see, some people like to say about intimacy, but they don’t mean it. Well, at least not perfect strangers. A store clerk does not want you seeing her most intimate secrets, and yet, it felt to me as if that’s what I was doing, seeing inside people to their most vulnerable selves and it frightened me, because there was nothing between me and the other person — no privacy, no boundary.

I returned to see my therapist after several years absence.

 “I’ve developed this twitch” I said. “I can’t look at people.”

“You can look at me, can’t you?”

“Yes, but I know you. And you know me. You know all the ugly dark things about me. And you still like me.”

I was terrified that if strangers knew about me, about who I was inside, they would be horrified. I no longer felt like I could hide what was on the inside of me. Everyone could see it. I was ugly. A monster. I was frightening, and I ended up frightening everyone I spoke to. Even my adult kids. They terrified me most of all because I thought they didn’t know me, not really, and I had to hide all that I was from them and I couldn’t bear that separation between us. I wanted to be one with them again and I wasn’t. They had grown apart from me. They weren’t mine anymore and that frightened me.

But then someone I loved very much shared with me long-held secrets that shook me to the core. I couldn’t bear dealing with them alone, so I went to get help and met with people who experienced hearing similar secrets from their loved ones. We looked into each other’s eyes and said, this is who I am. And over years of sharing my own deepest, darkest secrets with these people, I gradually began to believe that I was not so different from them, and that perhaps even I belonged to the human race, very much so, in fact. I celebrated that belonging and celebrate it to this day.

I feel one with my brothers and sisters on this planet, no longer separate but able to think of them as beloved. My beloved sister, I hear you. My beloved brother, I see you. I am no longer the worst human being that ever lived. I realize now how grandiose and egotistical that thought was, but that’s how I saw myself. All my life I had felt like the placenta, not the fetus, a thing to be discarded, not fully functioning, not fully formed. What a revelation to find that so many people feel the same way. So many people shared the same experiences of being lost and alone.

That is what binds us together–not our perfection but our imperfections, our brokenness. They make us real to one another. They give us hope that despite our warts and blemishes we are beautiful in marred, imperfect ways. Like kintsugi pottery–the perfect vase broken apart and glued together with gold seams becomes more beautiful than the original perfection. I’m okay with my imperfections and I’m okay with yours. That’s how and why I know I belong now.

Today, I feel my brothers and sisters across the planet and know we belong to one another. The homeless belong even though they are the homeless. Their reality scares me, triggering my fear of being unanchored, of outwardly not belonging anywhere. Homeless people look separated from the rest of us, and they may feel like they don’t belong to the human family, but they do. They do. They are woven into the warp and weft of our human fabric, a part of the whole. We humans cover the earth like a blanket. We belong to this existence. None of us is separate from it. Even those in solitary confinement, we can reach them in our prayers, hold them in our hearts, pray for the suffering.

Nowadays, I like to help others who are in the place I once was, feeling isolated and unreal. I extend an outstretched hand saying, ‘I’ve been where you’ve been. You are not alone.’ I once thought I had to figure out me alone, figure out life alone, figure out God alone. But I don’t. None of us do. Belonging is like swimming in water we can’t see. It is all around us and keeps us alive even when we aren’t aware of it.

When I found others like myself who felt rattled and destroyed by secrets they had heard, I began to feel the water, know the water, love the water. I began to participate in this living dance of life and take the hands of dance partners all around me and say I love you. Not only do you belong, but we belong together. We have all belonged together and just didn’t know it, didn’t live like it.

I suffered for years, blind to the fact that I was surrounded by other suffering souls. A lot of what kept me separate was my pain and fear. I couldn’t contain it and believed it would contaminate all who came near me and repulse them. Not true. Just the opposite, in fact. As I shared, people listened. As they shared, I listened.  Our tears connected us as did our laughter, and it still does.

We belong to one another, that is what I have discovered. We belong to this human family. All of us.

 "On the level of consciousness, The World represents the happy experience of having possibly made the essential step to becoming one's self, and thereby feeling the deep joy of fulfilling our purpose in life. If we no longer consider our horoscope and the difficult constellations to be found there as the evil product of an arbitrary fate, but rather 'remember' what we wanted to contribute with our life to the reconciliation of the exhausting tensions within ourselves and the world, then we can understand the great significance of this card. It shows how with time a well-ordered and purified overall picture is created from the chaos of the difficulties and contradictions that existed from the start."

--XXI The World, from The Tarot Handbook by Hajo Banzhaf