Left feeling false
Left feeling false
or,
Yes, it's official
Yes, it's official. I belong nowhere.
Every time that I have worked at Botsford thus far, my shift has been 6-2:30, so by the time I leave, all of the bars are closed. Tonight, however, I worked from 3 to 11:30, so I stopped at the Inn Place afterwards.
Paul was there (the old gay guy, whom I really like), Thomas was there (popularly known as "Hippy Tom"), and Leah was there (The whitest black person I have ever met in my entire life). But even though there were people there that I knew, I felt completely alone. I might as well have been sitting by myself in the corner. I just felt an intense sense of not belonging.
I was looking around at the people near me, who were laughing, singing, and enjoying themselves, and I felt none of it.
I think that since I've started back in school and have started a new job, I've gradually started aligning myself more toward the end of my "educated" spectrum, but that's not me at all. Yes, I can speak English with grammar that is more correct than Merriam Webster's, but that doesn't mean that I want to do so all the time. Blackness is an important part of my identity. So is the quality of being Arabic. So is the quality of being an alcoholic. I just can't synthesize it all into a coherent whole.
Friends don't make sense to me, because nobody else exists with this combination of selves. People seem to be all of one type. People are either white, black, white trailer trash, Arabic, Asian, or whatever else. The only self I have is a portion of all of these things, along with plenty more. The problem I'm left with is that no particular group is represented sufficiently in my personality to express the place where I belong.
When do I feel like myself? When I'm at home alone with my cats. I sit here and get drunk, watch what I eat obsessively, chide them in Arabic, sing along to black music, narrate my thoughts in impeccable English, speak with the accent of whatever person I spoke to last, and so on. All of these selves can coexist with no audience, but I crack when I'm forced to bring any one aspect of my personality to the forefront and inevitably am left feeling false.
or,
Yes, it's official
Yes, it's official. I belong nowhere.
Every time that I have worked at Botsford thus far, my shift has been 6-2:30, so by the time I leave, all of the bars are closed. Tonight, however, I worked from 3 to 11:30, so I stopped at the Inn Place afterwards.
Paul was there (the old gay guy, whom I really like), Thomas was there (popularly known as "Hippy Tom"), and Leah was there (The whitest black person I have ever met in my entire life). But even though there were people there that I knew, I felt completely alone. I might as well have been sitting by myself in the corner. I just felt an intense sense of not belonging.
I was looking around at the people near me, who were laughing, singing, and enjoying themselves, and I felt none of it.
I think that since I've started back in school and have started a new job, I've gradually started aligning myself more toward the end of my "educated" spectrum, but that's not me at all. Yes, I can speak English with grammar that is more correct than Merriam Webster's, but that doesn't mean that I want to do so all the time. Blackness is an important part of my identity. So is the quality of being Arabic. So is the quality of being an alcoholic. I just can't synthesize it all into a coherent whole.
Friends don't make sense to me, because nobody else exists with this combination of selves. People seem to be all of one type. People are either white, black, white trailer trash, Arabic, Asian, or whatever else. The only self I have is a portion of all of these things, along with plenty more. The problem I'm left with is that no particular group is represented sufficiently in my personality to express the place where I belong.
When do I feel like myself? When I'm at home alone with my cats. I sit here and get drunk, watch what I eat obsessively, chide them in Arabic, sing along to black music, narrate my thoughts in impeccable English, speak with the accent of whatever person I spoke to last, and so on. All of these selves can coexist with no audience, but I crack when I'm forced to bring any one aspect of my personality to the forefront and inevitably am left feeling false.