Rebuilding Rob

“A time when I felt out of place”?

That’s the story of my life

Growing up in the town where I lived, I always felt out of place. I had this perception that the people around me all felt like they were better than me. Even when I returned to my home town as an adult, I still felt like that. This area has always reminded me of the Rush song “Subdivisions”

Growing up, it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass-production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

As out of place as I felt growing up, I was always taken aback at how…racially homogenous the community I lived in was. The community was overwhelmingly Caucasian. Even though I was just a kid, I knew this wasn’t what the rest of the world – or even the rest of America – looked like. As one of my favorite movies says “being a teenager sucks. But that’s the whole point. Surviving it is the whole point” and I survived; like everyone else did: one day at a time.

I know, it wasn’t horrible growing up where I did. Suburbs really are a first world problem. But like the song says, it is stifling for the non-conformist. It wasn’t I like living on a Borg cube from Star Trek – you’re expected to assimilate. When you’re a kid and you can’t drive in a community that is designed for commuters, it feels like there’s no escape.

Today, after having gone away to college and living out of state for a extended period of time, I’m back where I started . Some things still fell very familiar; but other aspects of the town are radically different. Now, I see the kind of ethnic diversity that I grew up wishing this town had. It makes me happy, but I know that it makes a lot of people unhappy – which is indicative of our current political climate in this country. My political views are another thing that make me few out of place. People look at me and they assume they know how I vote. It’s discouraging sometimes being in a place where you k own that the pool around you don’t think they way you or want to solve the worlds problems they way that you do.

This is why it’s so important to have friends and crest your own circle. The truth is that everybody feels out of place at some point in their life. If by chance, there is some one out there who has never felt out of place, then I’m not sure that they’re actually living.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy
• Where Do We Go From Here? Five Years Since January 6.
• Bugs, Boundaries, and the Art of Not Being Invisible

The article “subdivisions” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.