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| Courtesy of Menna Azmy |
Music to me is more than just a playlist I play on repeat to keep me entertained. Music often channels my innermost thoughts and emotions. And that's why when I grow more attached to a song, the bond usually connotes a phase I'm going through.
"But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."
-Radiohead
For over a year, I have found plenty of consolation in Radiohead's "Creep". I believe it's fair to call this phase the post-graduation figuring real life (and myself) out phase.
Along the three years since graduating college, I have juggled jobs as often as I change spectacles (those who know me well enough know how frequent that is). While I was often criticized for changing jobs so often, arguing that this doesn't serve building a strong résumé, I never found those concerns logical. Because how could I have possibly stayed if I didn't feel like I belonged.
Belonging, that's a funny thing. As a kid, all you needed to belong to was a family, a group of friends, or a sports team. Belonging wasn't an idea one would dwell on much.
But once you're out there, belonging involves a lot more than just your social life. We start seeking spiritual belonging, emotional belonging, intellectual belonging, and suddenly, the people you find sanctuary in start to change. Your comfort zone starts to shift.
"All we know is that we don't know how it's gonna be. Please brother let it be. Life on the other hand won't make us understand. We're all part of the masterplan"
-Oasis
I have for long believed that we are all like pieces of a huge puzzle, each tinted in certain strengths or weaknesses because we are meant to occupy this one specific spot in the puzzle.
If you consider it that way, the equation becomes quite simple. The pieces either fit, or they don't. You either fit, or you don't!
I remember once reading "The Ugly Duckling" to a group of three-year-olds. I can never forget the concern they had on their faces when the duckling grew more and more emotionally scarred by being the outcast whom everyone mocked.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with how it ends, the ugly duckling finds out that he's not ugly after all, but a really beautiful goose. And to figure that out, he had to run away and leave his abusive family behind, until he came across a flock of geese, and he ever after found himself a new family.
"I'm not smart enough;" "I'm not pretty enough;" "I'm not good enough;" "I'm not special enough."
Most of what I have been seeing around me, and within, are a bunch of ugly ducklings scarred in different ways by being in circumstances that don't define who they are. Ugly ducklings who are in constant pursuit of finding where they belong.
The sad thing is that, unlike the intuitive three-year-olds who were concerned about the ugly duckling that was belittled by those surrounding him, society tends to force the pieces to fit, even though they weren't meant to. They'd rather see the duckling cope than leave everything it knows behind to find its rightful place in this world.
I think I have come a long way, but not long enough. Until I shake off that feeling of inadequacy -until I earn shaking it off- I guess I'll always feel like another ugly duckling.
I'll always feel like a creep.
