transabled.org

Hey Sean,

this may sound a bit depressing, but – do we ever belong anywhere? I have discussed this topic serveral times and the point is that even if there is some kind of community – eg church, a club, a university class – I often hear from members that they feel they don’t really belong/fit in because of XXX. There was never anybody who said they feel that this was their absolute place.

I think we’re all so different that when we try to form groups, they look homogeneous from the outside. But the very parts all feel as if they fit in only halfway.

I have heard that so often.

Take the encouraging part of it: This way you fit in/belong, even if you don’t match into the criteria for 100%.

Hope that wasn’t too depressing a thought.

Greetings, Karen

Nearly everybody, even the most normal person, experiences feelings of alienation and the desire to belong to somebody or to belong somewhere from time to time.

The first and most important thing is that you belong to yourself.

Everybody who lives belongs here. Every life is meaningful.

I have found that often when I desire to belong to some group or person, I have lost the deep relationship to myself, am not accepting of myself, and that means accepting of the little things, everyday desires and needs, like for sleep, relaxing etc. When I am in a state of “must”, I lose myself, and then I belong not to myself and thus nowhere.

Life will bring a lot of encounters. And belonging is like life itself: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon) You’re belonging while you’re busy searching for where you belong…

I think that a change of my body form would make rise my sense of belonging a lot. But there is belonging now, too, and it is something I have to be patient to wait for and I have to see realistically (belonging too strongly means losing one’s self) and which exists right now but I don’t estimate it enough.

To Phil:
Yes, you are right:
“The first and most important thing is that you belong to yourself.”
I like it. I feel the same way.
Many years ago, I tried to belong to several groups of people. The most important and meaningful experiment was when I tried to belong to a church (evangelical). The people were nice, the preacher was good, there wer many people of my age and I made new friends (I was 20 somethig then). But it did not work. After a few years I was offered to become a full member of the community. I thought about it and … I found out I could not go for it. a couple of yeras later I left the community completely.
When I found Eyescene, a website for glasses funs, glasses fetishists and visual impairment pretenders I thought it was The Community where I would belong.
No, I run a website with fictions for the community, I read the contributions, but I do not belong there.
The same it is with transabled.org. I like reading your texts, I understand you very well, although I do not want to roll a wheelchair nor crutch along. I have BIID of a different manifestation.
I like this website, but I know I do not belong here (I am different).
In real life I never succeeded in trying to belong anywhere. But still Sean is right, too. Humans are social beings. They need to belong.
I would like to belong somewhere, to have my bunch of gus in a pub, to be a member of a sport-team, to chat with intellectuals about theater plays and good movies in a nice café in the old part of town. But I can’t, coz I’m so fu****g different!

@ Bobby

Thanks for your words.

I once read a good book for young people, about the coming out of a gay guy. He suffers from not belonging. And there is a situation where he suddenly realizes that he does not WANT to belong to this “back-slapping manliness” of the heterosexual guys. The bunch of guys in a pub, the sports team: do you really think that they have a sense of belonging deep in their heart? I doubt it. Look at them. Most of their behaviour is a game, a play, where everybody hides his inner self.

Everybody is different, and though we all share something, as we all are humans. And we all feel lonely at times.

The poets have written so many good poems expressing this feeling of not belonging, of loneliness.

It is natural that we feel lonely as we are not at ease with ourselves, as I am split up inside, with a lot of tension and anxiety. And nobody else can solve my problem, only I can try.

“Across the Earth are leading
many a road and bend,
yet all are speeding
to the selfsame end.

Be you riding or driving
as twosome or three,
the last of your steps
belongs but to thee.

For skill’s not as valid,
nor all that is known,
as tackling the difficult
stuff by your own.”

Hermann Hesse: Lonely
(German: “Allein”, 1905)
from http://myweb.dal.ca/waue/Trans/Hesse-Allein.html

I don’t believe that this is the only side of truth. We are NOT alone. We DO belong. But we don’t sense it often. That happens when fear or stress has closed our hearts. And when you show your wound and suffering, a human will be there to listen and to take you in his or her arm.

“A lot of coldness is between humans because we don’t dare to act (to give ourselves) as heartly as we are.” Albert Schweitzer, 1924.

There are even voices who say that BIID might be a symptom of these barriers or inhibitions which make us feel not belonging. Like: I have to cut off my legs, because I cut off so much of my feelings, because I don’t express them etc.

@Phil: No… I do not want to see that you have to do all the difficult stuff on your own. Of course everybody is responsible for themselves and have to go the steps in their lives by themselves. But I don’t think that’s possible without support. In all the bad times I experienced in the last years, I had really good friends who supported me. Who literally washed the blood from my legs and held my hand when I was crying. This is the only way to get through. And this is our responsibility: To be around for others, friends, who need to trust us and get help from us.

I think we would die without that. I would.