Fitting In (from 2005)

Here's an essay that I wrote five years ago for an online writing class, on fitting in:

When I’m alone, I’m in bad company. That’s a piece of twelve-step wisdom that my mother imparted to me. It fit in well with my nagging sense of unworthiness. Now, that sense is not fact based; I have talents and skills and some admirable or lovable traits, and my efforts are appreciated at work and by my friends. Nevertheless, I have a sense of being marginal, unimportant, and unworthy of attention or love. This may have developed, at least in part, because both my grandmother and my father died when I was living with them and I didn't live with my mother until the other relatives were dead.

I'm afraid of revealing too much of myself to others, lest they see enough of me to realize how unworthy I am. On top of which, I tend to believe that I need to be perfect or I don't deserve to exist. This "all or nothing" approach leaves me feeling bad much of the time. Only occasionally do I think to tell myself that I'm good enough, even though imperfect.

Perhaps because of this sense of unworthiness, I imagine that I don't exist for others when I am not in their presence. So I am always astonished when someone reveals that they have been thinking of me in my absence, as when a relative or friend calls me up to see how I'm doing. It also startles me that other people sometimes take action based on what I say or do.

At school I had experiences that both strengthened and eased my sense of unworthiness. I skipped into the second grade in the middle of the first grade, so I was moved ahead of my age mates. Then I was probably too smart and too much of a smart aleck to be really liked. And I got chosen nearly last for athletic games, because I wasn’t any good at sports.

I started to fit in with the brainy kids after I discovered that a friend of mine got straight A’s and realized that I could do that too with a little extra effort. I did very well in school. I was second in my high school class, the valedictory speaker, a National Merit Scholar, a Governor’s Scholar, holder of the National Council of Teachers of English Award and the Degree of Distinction in the National Forensics League. Even Annapolis wanted me as a student, and they weren’t admitting females then. No question about it; I was smart and talented. I did fit in with the straight A, Knowledge Bowl crowd.

But I still had that nagging sense of unworthiness. One day at work I learned a bit about how it played out and what I could do about it. I was in a fairly bad mood that day. I couldn’t have told you what flavor of bad; my emotions were something of a mystery to me. One of my friends came by to invite me to join a group that was going out to lunch. Being in that bad mood, I turned them down. However, after the friend left me, I started feeling even worse and this time knew what parts of the feelings were - forlorn, rejected, worthless. Then I experienced two revelations. First, they hadn’t rejected me, I had rejected them. And second, I didn’t have to stick with my choice. So I ran after them, said that I’d changed my mind, and started feeling much better.