Friday 15 November 2013

Don’t feel you fit in, well look around you at all the other misfits.


 

So many blog posts and tweets about not fitting in, my heart could break. Most of these to do with the school gates.

Why do you want to look like the ‘perfect mum’ slim, designer clothing, ballerina daughter and football playing son?

Do you think their life is perfect? Do you think they’re honest with the others? Do you consider their marriage may be unhappy, that everything they own is on credit and every month they worry about getting the house repossessed? Do you assume they own their own house and the cars? They may rent and lease.

Do you not think that they may envy you, your confidence to arrive at school without your make up on and wearing casual clothes while they go to work in a job they hate, are under pressure with, just to keep afloat because they don’t want to appear to be a failure.

You know they way they look at you and you assume their looking down their nose at you, thinking ‘what a failure’ I don’t want to be like that, have you considered they may be thinking. ‘why can’t I be more like that?’ natural, real and just myself.

And while you’re going home after the school run thinking you don’t fit in, did you stop and take in how many other people there were in the playground, like you stood on their own, maybe thinking the same thing, but about you, not the ones you’re aspiring to be like.

I’ve spent years in the school playgrounds, joining the PTA, even running it for 2 years, my school playground has involved 5 primary school playgrounds, 2 at private schools and 1 of those in a different country. Village, town and City schools and do you know what? I never fitted in anywhere. I tried. I failed. And as time went on I actually didn’t care. There may have been some that looked up at me and thought ‘why can’t I be like that, there may have been some that looked at me and thought ‘what a mess’ but do you know what. None of it matters, because your kids leave school, they make their own friends.

Good friends are made through common interests and I’m afraid the fact they you all have children just isn’t enough of a shared interest.

 

 

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