Trying To Fit In A New Community

The feeling of being left out or being different is one of the most painful emotional experience for a human. Yet it is one of the most universal feeling in modern civilization. At one point in the life of a person they will experience being left out, or different from a group, which most of the time is me attempting to fit in a community where I feel I don’t belong. Generally, when trying to join a new community for the first time I feel obligated to attempt to fit in. For example, in the past I have joined a community event with a whole new community I wasn’t very familiar with and I felt desperate to make myself fit in so I don’t feel left out or different. Even though it was only for one day, I felt exhausted, worn out and beaten by not being able to fit in correctly.

Unlike myself, in the short story Long, Long After School the protagonist, Wes, was attacked by intimidators, not only verbally but also physically in a place he is supposed to feel safe by the cause of being different. In addition, Wes was forced to stay and live in a society that did not respect him, which is unlike my experience, where I had the chance to walk away from what made me feel left out. To this day I barely think about events I felt left out but for a person like Wes to live in a place where society excludes him, it must have been a traumatic experience I'm not knowledgeable about.