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In high school, I had the preppy clothes. They were from JCPenneys and not Neiman Marcus, but they looked the part. I ironed them myself, I starched the collar and placket and cuffs. And yet I was always off. My hair was never cut just right; it was always too crazy. Too messy. I never mastered the stiff walk, the hyper-controlled movement that all the uptight paranoid popular boys did. I couldn’t be bothered to do so.

You see, as much as I wanted to fit, I was also learning to be myself. My family was extremely good at that lesson. It was paramount in our home.

In college, I did it by drinking. A lot. A coworker made a comment some time back ago. “But you didn’t drink to fit in, right? You did it because you wanted to…” He was technically right. I didn’t drink that much to fit in. I drank to not stand out. I don’t think that is exactly the same. The subtle difference was already showing up. I wanted to be myself and yet maintain the balance of playing the game.

To think deeply about the effort I have put to fit in, I want to laugh very hard. I can do it well. Incredibly well. But yet, I have never actually managed to do it, like I only commit half-ass to the effort. Really, I work to fit, just enough. I work to the compromise. I hold onto the bits that let people see that I am not exactly like them, all the while struggle to play the game of the world.

It is exhausting. Although I still have the skills and in a sense I practice them regularly, I am loosing my desire to bother.

And yet I am not.

What does this all mean? Eh.

It means that I am doing well. I feel fine. I feel better emotionally than I have ever before in my life. Well, at least since three years old when the stress of understanding and fitting the world around me began.

I still ache. I still hurt. Physically and emotionally. Mentally too, I suppose, but that has lightened up.

I simply don’t post about it any more. It doesn’t mean the hurt has stopped. It means, I am struggling to fit in. I know it doesn’t look like it. I am still absolutely my own person. But you all are not seeing that person exactly as honestly as I would prefer.

But I get it. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to deal with it. Everyone else is struggling to not stand out in the crowd, either. That is sad to me, but until I manage to find my Manual to Life, I will keep at it, I suppose.

The funniest thing. I work harder to fit in and I get absolutely no extra reward. Nothing is different. All those folks that so wanted me to play the game have stopped listening. They just sit there; dead-weight on my list, never commenting but never going away either. Because, really, removing the blogs they don’t read would be the move of an individual. It would stir things. And nobody wants that, do they?

So I am there, with a massive crowd to filter through. People that don’t ever seem to want me in their life. I am left filtering through all the crap of theirs, missing the important moment in the lives of real friends for all the crap that has built up. And yet, if I choose to dump them, choose to not follow the dictates of the crowd. I am a rebel and over-dramatic and stirring shit.

No, really, I just want to clean up my life. Just like I suspect everyone else does.

I am missing important things from people important to me and any option I consider will leave me a bit more of a pariah.

The funny thing? I play pariah better than I fit in. I always have.

And here come the comments. The lines about my blog, do what you blah blah blah. And none of this makes me angry, or upset, or angry or depressed. none of it. Just a good deal frustrated. Just frustrated. I want it to be different and cannot figure out how to do that successful, that is always frustrating.

I feel like I am kept around as a cosmic joke. Like Michelle and her back-brace; so the popular kids can act like they like me, all the while sticking fruit magnets to my spine. They won’t actually invest time, but they hang out just enough to always have access to the entertainment they get from my antics. This is how I feel.

And yet, as excellent – and poorly – as I fit in. As I work to understand what exactly I am suppose to do, which everyone else seems to just know… I just… I know it doesn’t matter. I will be only ever be exactly me. And I have never minded that, except maybe the brief overwhelming moments, like when I was nineteen. I fit in well, but not exactly. I can do it excellently, but don’t. It never paid out, so really why should I.

I never once got anything for fitting in. And it gets old.

And yet, here I am. Looking for the extra pieces that will allow me… to fit… at least a little bit better.

It is a curious thing, the quiet of my mind. It is new to me. I have never had a quiet mind.

The past few days, it has been oddly calm, but even in its silence, it is deafening inside of my skull. Like I only achieve a quiet mind when it holds so much noise that I cannot focus on any of it. Seems a lot like being at work; all the machines roaring around me and nothing spoken ever getting to me…

So this week has been passing by me quietly for its roar. My brain is calm and still… seemingly. So much has overtaken me and overlapped that I don’t currently hear any of it.

It isn’t good or bad so much as curious.