Belonging

Today I am thinking about belonging and family. 

I moved every year from the time I was five years old. I was forever the new kid. Complicating this was the fact that my birthday is in September, just after school started, so I never knew anyone to invite to my birthday parties. 

You know that feeling when you walk into a room of people who all know each other and you know nobody? That was a common feeling during my childhood, always the outsider. Even when I did make friends, I was never the friend they had known since kindergarten. I was forever the new kid. 

It was my job to suss out the group dynamics and decide where I fit in. I was lucky to always find an amazing friend group, but I always felt like the newest member, and never felt entirely secure. 

I became a great friend because of this. My social life depended on it. I had to be great to be accepted, because the friendships had already been established. I had to be brave, honest, loyal, fun, cool, charming and smart if I wanted to be invited in. 

Though I gathered many fantastic friends along the way, I was always new at the beginning of the year, and leaving at the end. Imagine 14 years of this. Maintaining my friendships became an important part of my survival. I learned to value friendships new and old, and I tried hard to keep them.

As an adult, I continued to move and change a lot. I wasn’t forced by a terrible custody agreement to move every year, but I was used to it, so I did. I stayed the outsider for most of my life, never feeling like I had the tenure other people had. 

These days, I have friendships that are in their forties. I value all of my relationships and nurture them. People are important. But it wasn’t only my friendships that I lost every year and had to start over with, it was also my family. I moved between my mom and my dad every year, saying goodbye, saying hello. A lot of people tell me that they moved a lot growing up, but they moved with their families, their belongings. I said goodbye to my mom (or my dad) and got on an airplane alone with a suitcase. 

As I examine my personal feelings about acceptance, abandonment and love, I realize that I still struggle with feeling completely grandfathered in. While I am able to form lasting bonds and open my heart to people, I carry with me the feeling that I am an outsider, and susceptible to rejection. 

One of the reasons I stay in troubled relationships longer than I should, and form bonds quicker than most, is this feeling that everything is temporary, and I don’t want it to be. I long to be part of a family. 

My last relationship had a lot of flaws, but I was right there doing everything I could to create the family I long for. In the end, he told me that we weren’t family, and that I wasn’t invited to be a part of his family. He didn’t know it at the time, but there was nothing he could have said that would have been more hurtful. 

I am grateful for the pain I felt in that moment. Hearing him say those words, and feeling my universe destroyed by them, alerted me to the bigger problem. My need to be loved and accepted and part of a family was intense. 

It had nothing to do with him, or his family, it was something so deeply lacking in me that it defied reason and blinded me. Upon examination, I realized that this is why I stayed in every bad relationship way too long. 

As I work to recover from codependency, I continue to examine my motives. I know I want desperately to be a part of something, and I’m so grateful that I have these amazing children with whom I am automatically grandfathered in. It feels so great to be an important part of this family, I literally wake up excited about it every day. 

Sadly, I inadvertently tried to replicate the great feeling that I derive from being a mother by dating men who lacked the ability to care for themselves. Rather than seeking an equal partner, I had unknowingly decided that my true value was as a caregiver. 

Because the only lasting relationships I’ve been able to have were as a friend or mother, and all of my boyfriends eventually went away, I wrongly assumed these were the only relationships worth having. I stopped looking for a partner, I was looking for friends and dependents. 

I was thinking the other day about how grateful I was for the seriously loving friendships I have, and I was wondering why I can’t apply these feelings to a life partner. It suddenly occurred to me that it’s fear. My own fear of not having a life partner and family is exactly what stands between me and what I want the most. This is why I hate weddings and fear strong men. 

The kid in me is scared of being sent away. I fear that I will be unwanted and discarded, so I settle for being needed. Needed feels safe. Wanted feels like a trick. So all I have to do to change this is be brave. I have to forgive my parents for sending me away, I have to believe that I’m worth keeping. I have to be brave enough to believe that someone wonderful might invite me to stay.