I had an appointment one afternoon with a high school girl. I had vaguely known who she was, though I hadn’t ever really spoken with her before. I’d known she was a nice girl, one whom others seemed to generally think well of.
Shortly into our appointment I asked what was going on, what brought her in for counseling. It can be a difficult question for people to answer when it’s finally asked. Difficult to actually lower the defenses and give voice to the pain.
She looked down at her hands resting in her lap, and hesitated for a moment. Then she said very quietly, “Um, I just … I’m different. I don’t fit in with everybody else.”
I waited a second to see if she was going to say more. But she sat quietly, staring down at her hands.
So that’s where we started. She didn’t fit in. She was odd. All the time. I asked dozens of probing questions, trying to get a better picture of what was troubling her.
She was a junior in high school. Her mom was a single mom who worked nights to support herself and her kids. This girl was the oldest, so she was the one in charge at night. She got good grades. Had an after-school job four or five days a week. Then went home to get dinner, and do her homework. She participated in a couple different school sports, as long as she could fit the practice times into her schedule. Her mom was supportive of her, but her work schedule kept her from being able to be very involved. The girl’s employer had nothing but appreciation for the girl. Her teachers all identified her as a student they liked having in class. Her coaches, too, were pleased to have her on their teams.
In her free time, when she had free time, she hung out with a good group of friends. Nice kids. But they did more as a group than she did. She didn’t have the discretionary time that everyone else had. So, often it seemed, they would make plans on weekends which didn’t include her. Probably because they were used to doing things without her.
As we talked, there were tears a few times. The loneliness and longing on her part twisted itself into a framework of inferiority and insecurity. She was a loner. Not by choice. But by something she couldn’t quite understand. Not by her own design. She wanted to belong. But she was just different.
Some weeks later our kids were doing art projects at the kitchen table one evening. Several of them were finger painting. And what had initially been a mixture of individual, vibrant colors were manipulated for too long by eager little fingers. In that over-manipulation the colors changed into a universal dark brown goo covering the entire page.
As I was examining their efforts, I noticed one painting in particular. In what appeared to be an afterthought, the artist had added a splash of bright yellow paint on top of the brown goo. And then, most remarkably, had been able to resist the urge to mix the vibrant yellow into the brown. The result was lovely. One area of brilliant yellow in an otherwise page of brown, finger-painted chaos.
Looking at that particular piece of art I thought of the teenaged girl. I’d known since that first appointment with her that her burden came from remaining a brilliant splash of yellow in an otherwise over-manipulated brown mess. Why is it that the need to fit in is so great? So great in fact that others willingly give up their uniqueness, their color, just to be accepted as part of the communal goo. And when there is someone who clings to their uniqueness, for whatever reason, the pressure on them to become part of the chaos is tremendous.
Her pain was that she didn’t fit in. The way, I suppose, gold nuggets don’t completely fit in with the quartz that they’re embedded. Or the way a diamond doesn’t really fit into a deposit of coal. She didn’t fit in. The way the extraordinary never fits with the ordinary.
It’s a funny thing about being extraordinary. It doesn’t seem to recognize itself. I’ve not yet met anyone extraordinary who saw themselves for what they were. Always, they believed they were just ordinary. Or, as with this girl, sure that there was something wrong with them because somehow they just couldn’t quite rise up to the level of ordinariness which surrounded them. Not sure how to get there. And not realizing that they were looking in the wrong direction.
I’ve had similar conversations with our own kids over the years, as each goes through periods of not quite fitting in. Not being able to do things that everybody else is doing. Feeling lonely, and longing to fit in. And looking at me in disbelief when I try to point out the very simple reason for their loneliness. That not fitting in isn’t always a bad thing. Hanging onto our own individual thoughts and perspectives, our own vitality, is in fact what separates us from the collective goo. It is the very making of the extraordinary. And the extraordinary, by design, doesn’t fit with the ordinary.
I lost track of that particular girl a while back. She graduated from high school, financially independent at age 18. Last I’d heard she had completed college and was pursuing a graduate degree.
I think about her every once in a while. And I wonder if she’s realized it yet. How extraordinary she is. And that the extraordinary, by design, simply does not fit with the ordinary.
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