Misfit

“My people are the misfits,
The ones that don’t fit in.”
-Third Eye Blind, Misfits

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a misfit.  I’ve always felt my square edges as I’ve navigated and endless series of round holes. 

I was blessed (or maybe cursed) with a kind of passing.  Presenting, in most contexts, as largely fitting in.  But I could always feel that squeeze of my misfit.  The straight A student, varsity team captain, club president, student government vice president, obvious choice for the prestigious leadership retreat I remember best for long nights past curfew talking depression, God and the meaning of life while smoking cigarettes on a darkened staircase.    

I’ve never understood “normal” people.  Not really.  Swimming through life, I’ve always felt under water.  On the wrong side of the glass in the fishbowl.  I can see the “normal” world all around me.  When I look around the rooms I’m in…and meet the faces that I meet…  I’m close, but I can’t quite touch it.     

And then, some days, someone swims close.  They’re on my side of the glass.  They feel the shock when the lighting strikes the same way I do.  They have an open wound too.  And our wounds speak to each other.  And listen…  Those are my people.  The misfits.  The ones that don’t fit in. 

I grew up thinking I was wrong.  Not just on the wrong side of the glass.  But wrong for being there in the first place.  I wish I could let my fellow misfits know they’re not wrong.  There’s no such thing as wrong.  Same way there’s no such thing as perfect.  Just because the holes are round, doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be square.  Maybe we’re all connected by our corners.  The parts that get hit hardest.    

In fact, maybe we’re all misfits.  Maybe what we see on the other side of the glass is a reflection.  Warped, like a circus mirror.  And we’re all in here swimming alone thinking we’re on the wrong side of the glass.  Maybe we just need to stop looking out and start looking in.