Belonging

The way I used to do it was just ignore the feeling and barge hard. It was the feeling of not belonging. I had graduated from university but didn’t know what to do. There was nothing left to do. So I signed up for another year at another university. I shouldn’t have really because I was kind of sick of writing essays about poems and writers. Kind of sick of proving how smart I really was never proving anything.

It was my home town. First I was going to university in another province far away. Then I was finishing up those credits at my home town university because I didn’t get them all, the way I should have. This time I was going to do it for real, push the hardest ever, prove to everyone how brilliant I was, try super hard, hold nothing back, wow everyone. The feeling of needing to succeed so much was at a pinnacle, at the pinnacle of a hill; which conveniently was where the school was too. You could sit on the front steps of its important beautiful entrance, look down and see a big expanse of lawn. And a little concrete path going down in between the grass that you couldn’t see the rest of anymore at a certain point of slope. Nobody was going to keep me out of where I didn’t feel like I belonged, of where what I wanted wasn’t going to be okay.

Today Larry’s cousin Sharon’s turning 60 and her daughter’s having a dessert party and Larry doesn’t want to go. His mother’s calling. His aunt’s calling. “Don’t break the family up.” “Come on, get over it.” “We all want what’s for the best.” But what if he just doesn’t feel like he belongs? Does it have to mean all those other things?

I wonder if I would feel like I belong in writing grad school. I know I want it desperately. Do I want it just like I wanted it before, to bang my head against a university wall of how I don’t belong, how everything about me is all wrong?

It’s nice being at the top of a hill, because you have the view, especially when it’s a big open space. Except if there were to be predators there they could see you easier too.