Despite my ability to run fairly fast, be somewhat elusive in traffic, and hit a ball pretty damn far, I could always count on being the last man to go to a given side, and also being received without much fanfare.
I'd like to say that was the only time when such a thing happened, but unfortunately, it wasn't. There's been many other times in my life, at many social levels, where I've felt both out of place and unwelcome.
Like many other things, I got used to it after a couple years. It became just another thing I grew relatively numb to. Where it didn't bother me as much because it became an expectation more than a surprise.
What I never understood, however, was why me? What was it about me that made it so difficult to just blend into the crowds I wanted so badly to be a part of?
In lieu of an answer, the only logical conclusion was it was because I was just different than everyone else. As a result, I just wasn't going to ever be inside the same spheres of the people I cared about or were interested in. That was the conclusion I reached even before I was 16, and not much in the years since have changed my perspective.
It also made it so hard for me to disregard the people in my own sphere, no matter the things they may do to hurt me, or the trouble I caused them in return. I gave second chances, even if they weren't always deserved, because I always wanted the same thing for myself.
Being out on the fringes most of the time isn't always fun. As much as I found the privacy of being left out to be occasionally refreshing as I didn't have to be part of the usual drama or other things I wanted no part of, the older I've gotten, the more I've still wanted to belong to something or someone.
The difficulty lies in trying to find that something, whatever it is.
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