Both sides now

It occurred to me, as I was traveling on the New Jersey Transit on my way to New York City, that there are two sides to feeling as if I do not belong. One is excruciatingly painful because I feel so victimized, marginalized, and excluded, that I become enraged and helpless at the injustice of being left out.

With the other side, however, I become an outsider looking in. I feel detached and peaceful, free of the burden of responsibility and relieved not to be a part of anything. It is the side where I seem to have control over my life. I am able to observe and choose whether or how much to become involved, or I move on untouched. It is the side that enables me to decide whether I owe anything to anyone or not. And the owing is in whether I will share my feelings or not, as much as it is whether I am responsible for anyone or not.

I have struggled with the former side of exclusion all of my life, starting within my family of origin and then transferring those painful feelings to everyone and everything I subsequently became involved with: marriages, lovers, organizations, work, friendships, family relationships …

Part of letting go and bidding farewell to the burdens of my past has been to transfer to the other side of not belonging. I am becoming more and more an outsider looking in. I realized this yesterday on the train. I looked out the window at the scenery rushing by and thought to myself, "Has life just become more lonely?" After all, when I am busy feeling painfully excluded and hurt by all those wrongs against me, I am deluded into feeling as if I am, in fact, involved with people, and not alone. As an outsider looking in, I am at once stripped of illusions and faced with being alone. Just me. Looking in. Observing. Detached. De-personalized. Un-involved. And, yes, it does seem a tad lonely. Even a bit scary. But then, I think that is how it is. Being an adult, I mean. Becoming mature. Being able to choose how I feel. And not being dependent on other people’s actions for or against me.

I started to talk about it and then stopped myself abruptly. It just felt too personal, private, deep … at that moment. I laughed to myself as I said out loud, "I think I’ll write about it on my blog …"

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Blogging about books