The Beauty of Not Belonging

Fun fact: I lived with a ghost once. A little girl. Every night after I put my children to bed, I'd sit in the living room to take my first deep breaths of the day. The ghost would pace the hall behind me, walking softly, never making a sound—other than those slowly padding footsteps. Every night, I'd sigh and tell her it was time for bed, and the footsteps would stop.

I think of her when my kids joke that I need a bell. Because creating a safe home while healing from childhood trauma is weird, because finding where you belong after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider is hard, and because no matter how healed you are, some scars never truly fade.

I'm five foot two but I am not a small woman, and still, I can enter a room with no warning. I've startled my kids countless times simply by appearing beside them—and once, I scared my oldest so bad, she burst into tears. All I did was enter the room. No anger, no animosity, no sneaking. I just walked through the door.

"God, Mom," she said, wiping her eyes. "Get a bell!"

And mostly, of course, they're joking—but I've often wondered how much of that instinctive silence was learned before I recognized what it was.

I spent a lot of time as a child trying not to be noticed. Trying to take up as little space as possible. To be quiet and stay out of the way. Don't ask for too much, don't feel out loud, don't draw attention.

I'm forty-two years old now, but in many ways, I'm still overcoming adversity no child should ever face. I'm still working on breaking generational cycles. Still learning to take up space. Still figuring out what it means to belong.

But sometimes I think about the girl who never believed she'd belong anywhere.

For the majority of my childhood, belonging felt like something only other people got to have. My parents divorced when I was four, and they both had horrible second marriages. My step-mother was psychologically unstable and often violent, but my father was trying hard to make the marriage work. My step-father was a prison-gang-affiliated ex-con, and that means everything any sane person would expect it to mean. My grandmother loved her family, but she was overburdened and overwhelmed. Her mother was aging and needed care, her husband was ill, two of her children were in impossibly dangerous situations, and she was already raising four grandchildren.

No room at the inn, indeed.

I lived in a lot of places. Apartments surrounded by bullies. Trailers where gang initiations were the soundtrack of the night. Houses where my father opened the front door with a shotgun by his side. Once, even a downtown hotel, where the music of the bar below drifted up through the floor as I slept. Mostly, I lived with family. My mother for a while, my father for a while, then back to my mother again.

But I felt alternately like a hassle to be managed and the rope in a tug of war—a piece in a game, a means to a win. Useful sometimes, but never unquestionably wanted.

Sometimes it was obvious, like the time my mom made me put everything I owned in garbage bags and call my dad to come get me. Other times it was more subtle.

I remember living with my grandmother in middle school, and I was an early riser just like her. I shared a bedroom with my cousins, so when I woke up in the mornings, I'd slip out of the room with a book, and I'd read in the living room while she drank her coffee. I didn't ask for anything. I didn't make noise or turn on the TV. I just wanted somewhere to be without bothering anyone. But sometimes she'd see me and roll her eyes and shake her head.

Eventually, I stopped going into the living room. I'd sneak into the bathroom instead, where I'd close the door as silently as possible, curl up on the floor, and read until everyone else woke up. And I don't think she meant for those moments to feel so brutally unwelcoming. Looking back, I think those early-morning cups of coffee were the only quiet moments she had, and she was probably just frustrated at having to share them.

But children don't always understand adult circumstances, adults don't always make time to explain, and I was a traumatized middle schooler, examining the silent signals of things I wasn't allowed to ask about.

My grandmother was an incredibly strong woman who carried impossible challenges without flinching. She pulled no punches, took no nonsense, and always seemed to know what to do. But she had a silly streak, too, and she loved giving prank Christmas gifts. Most of the time, they were funny, like the Hanson CDs taped into car magazines. Sometimes they were ridiculous, like the necklaces hidden in plastic pieces of fruit. But there was one year when the joke wasn't funny at all.

That year, everyone had presents. Except for me.

I remember watching everyone open their gifts. I oohed and aahed as expected, trying to be well-mannered and unbothered and as invisible as I felt in those moments. I didn't cry. I didn't ask why I got left out. I didn't leave the room. I just sat there. And eventually my grandmother went into the bathroom, waited a moment, and called to my mother for help.

They came back laughing, their arms loaded with presents for me. And I don't remember a single one of them. I remember being the only one without them. And sometimes, even now, I wonder what might have happened if I'd reacted differently. If I'd reacted normally.

I have children of my own now, and I don't have to imagine what they would have felt, as normal children who would never be subjected to that. So I wonder: What if I'd cried, or said I was hurt? What if I had asked, "What about me?" What if I had simply stood up and walked away?

I didn't come from a comforting family. I doubt there would have been hugs or apologies. Most likely, I'd have been told I should be grateful to be there at all.

I'll never know, and maybe that's part of why the scar still lies protectively over the place that was wounded. Because I learned early that silence was safety. By then, I'd already spent a year in a children's home—a fourth grader placed in a house full of older teen girls, because even there, I didn't quite fit where I should have.

And what's funny is, that year turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I ever received.

I shared a Jack-and-Jill bathroom with one of the other girls, and at night we'd sneak in there to talk. We'd put towels against the doors to block the light, we'd sit with our backs against the bathtub, and sometimes we'd talk until morning. That girl taught me to shave my legs. She taught me to make jokes out of hard times.

And when she found out I'd never seen Mary Poppins, she was stunned.

She and the other girls got the house parents to set up a movie night, and we piled onto the couches in the living room to watch. There were snacks and blankets and jokes and lots of laughter, and all I remember is the certainty that those messed up teens wanted me there.

And in a place no child should ever have been, in a home that should never have housed a girl my age, for a little while, people made room for me. Not as another thing to manage, another complication to juggle, or another problem to solve. They got excited about a child's movie, simply for the sake of sharing it with a child. They looked forward to the circus, simply to watch a little sister enjoy it for the first time. Because they didn't see a messed-up kid or a story waiting to be told.

They saw a person worth talking to. A child worth teaching. And even they knew the power in a spoonful of sugar.

*****

I still think about that little girl sometimes, especially now, as a mother. I listen to my children stampede through the house and I remember the girl who learned to walk softly and stay unnoticed. My daughter sings at the top of her lungs, and I think of the child who read in the bathroom to keep herself out of the way. The one who knew better than to cry when pain was gift-wrapped for Christmas.

Sometimes I wish I could go back, even for just a moment, to tell her something I didn't understand then. Something that might radically change the course of her life. I would tell her that feeling unwanted does not equal being unworthy.

Maybe the problem isn't that you're too much. Maybe it isn't that you're not enough, either. Maybe you're just in a place that doesn't have room for who you are.

I've carried the lessons of those years into adulthood in ways I never intended. Those lessons sit in the room where I lead students at church. They inform every conversation I have with my daughter's friends when she brings them to me (or they come on their own) for counsel and understanding. They are the foundation of a prayer that I will never leave any child wondering whether they're wanted.

And maybe they do complain when I appear unexpectedly. Honestly, maybe I do need a bell. But no matter how many times they roll their eyes or get mad or need space...they will never have to become invisible to earn their place in my home.

One of the strangest treasures of my childhood is that not belonging taught me what belonging should feel like. It should feel like making room and being wanted without having to earn it, even if it isn't practically perfect in every way. Because we all deserve a place where we don't have to disappear.

So until next week, stay visible. Stay silly. And as always...

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