on the outside looking in...

I'm back. Well, we'll see. Life with a toddler is busy.

I've been thinking.

It's taken me a long time to understand that I am, and always will be the perpetual outsider. The good thing about this is that I find camaraderie amongst the other people who are standing on the outside, staring in and wondering what it would feel like to belong. The bad thing is that it's hard to be on the outside and it's hard to always feel a little out of place.

I feel this way as a parent as well.

So many of us head into parenthood determined not to lose ourselves in the process. We promise ourselves that our lives will be the same as they always have been, but there'll be a baby tagging along with us on our adventures.

Simple.

Except it's not really that simple. Because there's no way to understand that you're not about to add a person into your already organized and comfortable life, you're about to destroy everything that you've ever known to be true, then pick up the pieces and put it back together in some new, amazing and creative way. It's a New Life. It's a wonderful and fantastic life, and it took a year for me to not want my old one back to some degree.

I think I thought my New Life would bring all those wonderful new mommy and daddy friends, and it has brought so much opportunity to meet new people. What I didn't factor is that nothing will change who I am at the core, and having a child in itself is not enough in common.

It's hard.

I want to be part of the popular kids for once in my life, but almost four decades of existing on this earth has not made the level of conformity required to Belong something that is palatable for me. Yet I still maintain this fantasy that I can somehow exist within THE GROUP but be respected and appreciated for me.

Then I think about Finn, whose entire life right now is hanging out with mommy and mama and playing with toys and reading and seeing his grandparents, and how he has yet to figure out where he is in this world, or how to fit in with other people. It makes me sad since it's been such a struggle for me, and I don't look forward to my child going through that same thing. Then again I am afraid that he'll turn out to be someone who doesn't face the world with my cynicism, who WILL think high school was the best time of his life, who won't end up on the outside and I'll be standing out there and staring in at HIM.

My beautiful wonderful son.