sigh.

I have this thing, this feeling, like I fit in.

I have never felt it, as a whole, before.

As a child, I was sweet and compliant, as my dad would say. I wanted to be the helper rather than play competitive scary games with other children.

As an adolescent, I was 13 going on thirty, if you will. I was the babysitter that cleaned up the house and did the dishes for the parents whose children I was watching. I was grocery shopping and hanging out with adults, in utter contentment.

As a high schooler, I was ready to be out around the time I started. I was in the kitchen with the adults at gatherings. I was never in to the same things high schoolers were in to. I cooked dinner on Saturday nights. I didn’t even know where the parties were. On Mondays, I was at FAITH Evangelism outreach, bringing people to Jesus. I was the High School yearbook editor, not by choice, but by vote, by my high school-like peers that had no interest in taking on the responsibility, and knew I wouldn’t be able to help but take on more responsibility.

I was from a small town, born with a city girl mindset. I was always seeking and thinking about things that made the typical life-long Inolan go cross-eyed.

When I went to the Christian college I had coveted, in hopes of finding like minded people, I realized no one had to like me, and much of them weren’t like me at all. I was scary to some, perceived as confident, broken up and insecure and wavering on the inside. I was not the camp counselor type, nor was I granola, or into splunking. I don’t even know how to spell that if it tells you anything. And so I spent four years as an outsider, as a whole, because I didn’t always have a smile on my face, because my parents were not alumni, and had never taken me to Sunday School or had family meetings or kept me from watching the Smurfs or sheltered me from Saved by the Bell or R rated movies. I found true friends along the way, that I an ever thankful for. I am reminded of why I pay a student loan payment every month each time I think of them. And though I felt safe in their presence, even they did not make me feel like I belonged in that particular place.

I chose a major I was not passionate about in the midst of people that were passionate about it. Talk about outsider.

So what do I do? I move to the state of Florida, a place I had never desired to inhabit, to live with a person I love, but am nothing like, if you don’t count our last names. I worked in an office full of people that were either married or had children or some kind of mental disorder. Shut up. I have no mental disorder. I promise.

And then I moved home, to live with my parents. I do not know if there will ever be a phase of my life that I feel like I fit in with my parents. I have friends that do. I admire them. But my mom is usually telling me that I am weird. I love my parents. I often enjoy them. But I don’t fit in with them.

And so here I sit, on my cozy twin bed, fitting in. I feel at ease with the group of people I have chosen to spend my life around. We are not all the same. We do not always agree. But I am accepted, and mostly, understood.

There is a question that arises in my head, however. Does my feeling of fitting in exist because of the acceptance that has been directed towards me from other people? Or am I able to perceive acceptance from others because of the acceptance I have found a way to give myself, that was always so allusive in the past?

Either way, I will take it.