Just a misfit...

For some reason, I woke up at 5am and could not get back to sleep.  In that quiet time, for some reason my mind wandered, and it wandered to this.  I am a misfit.  It's true,  I just don't fit in.  Just like Rudolph and all those toys on the island.  I don't conform.  I never thought it was a huge problem.  But thinking about it, I guess it has affected my life in small ways.

Growing up, we were the only white family on the block.  My brother and I were pretty much the only white kids in school.  We took ribbing for it, got into fights and such as well.  But also made some darn good friends at the same time, and some of those kids are still in the neighborhood, or have ties to it.  And our kids have played together when we visit.  So in those younger years, it all balanced out and I never gave it much thought.  I am sure it also helped me to become the open-minded person I am today.

I was always the fat white girl, and as such I am shy.  Always have been.  I know that is not conducive to making friends.  But I made a few in high school.  My mom sent me off to a private Catholic high school thinking she was keeping me away from some of the bad influences that were present at the local public high school.  Lotta good that did her in the end.  I ended up pregnant at 16.  Yeah that went over well in a Catholic high school LOL.  I gained some interest while pregnant, but only had a couple real friends.  And eventually, they drifted away.  By the time I graduated, I had a totally different set of friends than when I started high school.  And once high school ended, those relationships kinda disintegrated too.  I do have some contact with a few folks via Facebook, but we are all spread out anyway so its not like a real friendship, just a little reconnecting.  Which is fine.

So here I sit at 37.  Still the shy, fat white girl.  Married though.  4 kids, aged 20, 14, 13 and 8.  I like sports, my kids like to play sports and we do spend a lot of time taking them to games and practices.  My music of choice is nothing like most folks I know.  I am just different.  Any fellow moms I meet that are around my age, their oldest kids are the age of my youngest, or even younger.  I would think that my having kids in different stages would be a positive, that maybe I could share some experiences when my "friends" kids get to those ages.  But you know what?  It seems more like a hindrance.  Whether folks think I don't have anything in common with them because of my family make up or whether they think my older kids could be a bad influence on their younger, innocent ones...any "friends" I may have made in the past few years seem to have vanished.  Whether it was planning get-togethers outside of the moms group we were all in, or quietly, unceremoniously unfriending in Facebook, almost everyone has disappeared.  Yes I have contact with some, but things sure are not the way they used to be.  It makes me sad.  With my personality, yeah I take some of it personally.  And I definitely take it super personal when I am told flat-out that my kids are not good enough, that they are a hindrance to any friendships.

My husband and I are also very close.  We actually like to spend time together.  And that seems to be an oddity too.  My husband is fine with me going out occasionally, and even though I have encouraged him to do the same when asked, he has given one to many "not tonight" answers and thus does not get many, if any,  invites anymore.  He says he would rather stay here with me, and not necessarily leave me home with the kids while he is out having fun, after I have been dealing with them all day.  Which I appreciate.  Shame other folks can't do the same.  And the fact that our kids are older, getting together with other families just does not happen because it seems the older ones my expose the younger ones to....something.  What?  I have no idea. 

So maybe it is good that I am OK with being a loner, a misfit.  Sure, my feelings have been hurt.  I guess I can, and do, get over that.  But I do wonder why folks preach tolerance and then hold small things against others when going about their own lives.

And by writing this, maybe I have figured out why my 14 y/o is such a misfit herself.  She is nothing like the rest of us...she is into stuff we are not, she does not like the stuff we do.  How she has lived here for 14 years and turned out this way, i don't know.  I guess maybe she is just like her mother!  A misfit....