Lately, I have been feeling lonely and not understood, I don’t seem to fit in my social circle now that my ideas about happiness and life have been spoken out and I’ve been thinking a lot about the reasons behind it.

I know it's a natural human instinct to want to fit in and be accepted by those around us. We seek out communities where we feel like we belong and we often go to great lengths to conform to the norms and expectations of those communities.

I’ve grown up in a very stereotypical biased environment. Growing up in a small city you don’t have many options of “being different” and not fitting in. Also at the time I was growing up this wasn’t encouraged either. We were thought to “obey the system”, don’t argue with the adults, do what we’re told, etc. And I seem to have mastered this skill of fitting in and following the crowd for quite a long time.

But what happens when we don't fit in?  I guess this explains why I always wanted to leave and live abroad. Somewhere where nobody knew me or could judge me, and where I could be who I am. Not even the simple things of partying all the time at a young age - as a decent well-educated teenage girl, you were not supposed to do that, or else you risked being “labeled”. So I’ve surpassed my “outspoken/different” self for the biggest part of my life.

One could imagine that one of the first things I did when I moved abroad at 24 was to party wild and “catch up for the missed time”.  So far so good, no judgment, everyone around me was doing the same as most of us were supposedly here for a year or two and then move forward. Then with the time my circle of friends took its shape, I was surrounded mostly by expats or internationals living here until one by one half of them started moving to a different country and I started settling in - same as the rest of my friends who stayed. Everything was perfectly fine, we were all in relatively long relationships, decent career paths, and thinking of kids, so it felt like a place I fit in until it didn’t anymore. And I found myself on the outside looking in again.

The difference to my younger self is that now I feel it's ok to be different. Most of my friends are happily married and seem to be satisfied with their lives. I, on the other hand, want more from life. That's perfectly fine. I want to embrace my difference and live a fulfilling life. I want to teach my daughter that it's ok not to fit in, although most of us have been taught to value conformity and fitting in with the crowd, but the truth is that being different can be a strength and one shall embrace it. I don't talk with 98% of my friends about my path to divorce, nor much about the disease as we don't share a common view on either.

For example, I want to have a partner who supports me and adds value to my life, and challenges me to be a better version of myself. If that's not met, I prefer to be on my own. And that's something most of them don't necessarily understand. So now when we meet, we try to avoid the topic as it's uncomfortable for both sides. Those unspoken things though bring a hole in my relationships. So the conversations are kept to the topics of kids, schools and so. And that's without even mentioning my chronic disease which is neither well-researched nor well understood...

This time around though I don't plan to fit in. I would like to go my direction and lose a friend or few if needed. I'm fed up with having superficial conversations, not speaking my mind so I'm not judged, and not seeking the things in life I believe in. I'm tired of giving 100% when I can only give as much as certain days allow it because I'm in pain. I know it's going to be a bumpy road, and it feels like it's going to be a lonely road. One thing I'm positive about is that if I stick to my difference and make it my strength, one day I'll manage to surround myself with more people who accept me for who I am. So I want to learn how to celebrate my differences and don't be afraid to let my personality shine.