by G E Barr

Created on: December 02, 2009

Social Disengagement

There are three types of circumstances which can produce the feeling of being an outsider. First of all, there is being shunned because you did something the group doesn't like, or you did something they practice and you got caught. Secondly there is a knowledge that you are, somehow an outsider. It is a nuance of knowledge one is born with. Thirdly, there is the mentally ill person.

In all three scenarios, the feeling that you are an outsider is real.

When I was a scrawny seventh grader, about four feet 10 inches tall and thin, I played on a softball team. I never in my wildest imagination imagined myself as a ball player. It simply never occured to me. However, my best friend at the time, did play. She was cool and hip and she wanted me to be cool and hip. I'd just returned from Okinawa when I entered this realm of my strange life. I was a tom-boy who experimented with an irrigated garden and had a leaning toward poetry. I was terribly naive and less troubled with my looks, than really understanding society and the machinations thereof. I had an incredibly hard time dealing with the cruelties of life. Like Vietnam. Like a girl my age dying of an overdose of speed. Like mean boys doing grotesque things on the school bus.

But, this best friend of mine was determined to transform me. To make me tough, cool and hip. I was accepted at this certain school which I attended in Texas. I got along fine with the moneyed children, the struggling middle class children and the poor kids, frankly, scared me to death.

I was accepted, even by the poor kids, but on the inside, I felt like an outsider. When I went to softball practice and the coach said, calling me by last name, "...You could go bear huntin' with a switch." I guess he was trying to make me feel welcome.

I am a small town person, with a big town mind. And I am an outsider.

About a block from where I live is a half-way house for the mentally ill. I've seen them out there, lying about in the green grass and smoking and talking amongst each other. I cannot help but pass the place when I leave my home to go to town. Sometimes, I walk and I walk right past them.

I do not say anything to them nor do I look at them or attempt to engage them in conversation or give any indication that I am wanting to hang out with them. In fact, this is the same way I deal with all of my neighbors. I am an outsider.

No amount of arbitration or diplomacy can change that.

One of the most freeing aspects of life is self acceptance. Oh, sure, from time to time I engage in idle chitchat when I go to pay my bills or shopping. As alone as I am, I am not lonely. I do not pine for the group. The group is a heinous lot of trouble. And I am always on the verge of something. Discovery, mostly.

I see nothing wrong with being an outsider.

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