I barely sat to write this past week and lost track of how many days it had been. There was so much to do, important things—some truly important and some only because everyone else deems them so, but to exist, we must abide. But this Sunday, I woke up in my own skin for a change and decided it was as good a time to write as any. Often when I talk to people about things, about religion or politics or society, in general, I softly realise that I am an outcast in more than one way, that I only manage to feign my belongingness in some sense, like a poor disguise, and that the people I meet can slide this veil off in variable amounts. But on more occasions than necessary, I feel out of place, or at least out of step with the world. Things that are apparent conclusions to me are absent from the view of others. I think it is my general competence to follow instructions when I choose to that lets me fit in with this world. If I were, by some odd curse, incompetent, I would have had a hard time building a life. But now that I can carry myself, I can enter the same places as the others even though we all know I should not be there.
Growing up, people often tell you some things that stick with you. One such memory is when someone told me I had raw ability, that it was a rare gift where all my measure of talent had no adjective around it, that I could truly do whatever I wanted to if I set my mind to it, and if I chose to, that it was all like clay waiting to be moulded. As the years have passed, I have seen exceptions to this and found things I could not learn for the life of me, a graveyard of attempts, but I have found that statement to hold its ground more times than I could discount it entirely. Perhaps, I can fit in as well as I do because of this, because of my ability to learn and be useful. It only helps that my only want from life is also this: to be useful. But if I were asked if there was a place I truly belonged in outside of my home, I would say the list is sparingly short, and even then, I would be giving some grace to some. But mostly, I am a part of myself when I am out in the world. I often knit my life across several parts of it to feel complete.