ive been out of place everywhere ive ever been. im the black sheep of my family, my parents divorced and both keep up with my older sister because she's the good girl and im the bad girl so they mostly ignore me, their partners barely know me. every kid in church knew how to act holy except me. every kid in my private school acted rich except me, because i had hand me down clothes and no idea what their lives were like. in hobby spaces, i feel like a larper because i only got into everything in the last couple of years since i wasnt allowed secular media growing up. i have had to fake it everywhere and to everyone and now i genuinely just feel like a big fat liar. i feel like i dont have any friends because my friends dont "know" me even though they kinda do, i just feel like theres some amount of "i am actually a poor stupid weirdo" nobody sees that is truer than whatever they do see and it stops me from feeling like im really close with anybody. but i cant just start crying "please think less of me but love me anyways because thats what i need to feel like you really do see me and really do care about me". how to cope
>>34547040Realize that nobody is analyzing you are intently as you are analyzing yourself. Focus less on you and how you are perceived and more on enjoying those hobbies and the company of friends
U dont fit in because you think you don't fit in. If you didnt even think about it you would fit in.t.learned this the hard way and am now very lonely
1/2>>34547040I get what you mean more than you probably think.When I was a kid, before my parents divorced, I studied in a private school surrounded by rich kids while my family was struggling financially. I remember having holes in my shoes sometimes, holes in my socks too. There is even a photo one of my teachers took of my sock and sent to my parents because she thought it was funny or unusual. She probably did not mean anything bad by it, but looking back now, it says a lot. I was just a poor kid in an environment where everybody else already seemed to belong naturally.I think experiences like that change the way you see yourself very early. You start noticing the differences between you and everybody else all the time. You become hyper aware of how you talk, how you dress, what you know, what you do not know. You learn to observe before speaking. You learn to adapt yourself depending on the room.Then my parents divorced when I was a teenager, and after that I felt emotionally on my own for a long time. Not in some dramatic way, more in the quiet sense that nobody was really guiding me anymore and I had to become independent early because there was no other option. It feels strange growing up like that because part of you matures too fast while another part stays stuck trying to understand why you always felt slightly outside of everything.So when you say you feel fake, I do not think that feeling came out of nowhere. If someone spends years feeling out of place in their family, school, church, hobbies, everywhere, eventually they stop feeling connected to themselves too. You spend so much time adapting that you start wondering whether there is even a real version of you underneath all of it.
2/2>>34547479I do not really believe in "coping" as a way to live. The goal of life should not be to become numb enough to tolerate it. Find people you do not have to constantly perform around.You do not sound like someone who wants people to think less of you. You sound like someone who is exhausted from feeling like you always have to hide parts of yourself to be accepted.
>>34547040Maybe - just maybe - your parents think you are strong enough not to need them.
>>34547245FpbpNobody gives that much of a fuck about youGet over yourself
>>34547245it would be easier to believe this if many people had not explicitly analyzed me in the ways i talked about. i have been told i do not fit in dozens of times by different people in different places. even people im friendly with react like im joking when i try to be a little more honest about myself or my life. i agree your advice is like a normal thing to do but im saying theres a real problem here, theres an invisible barrier between me and the people i care about because i work so hard to fit in and the only ways i can think of to change that are embarassing and rude.
