Otherness: (n) 1. the state of or fact of being other or different 2. A thing or existence separate from or other than the thing mentioned and the thinking subject.
Years ago, I had a blog. I wrote about anything and everything, but eventually, I couldn’t come up with anything relevant or unique to say. What on earth was I supposed to blog about? I really wasn’t that interesting, my life not nearly fascinating enough.
They say, ‘blog every day and they will come,’ but you can’t pull blood from a stone. How was I supposed to come up with creative, riveting and compelling anecdotes and stories on the daily? I needed help. I needed inspiration. So, I turned to the dictionary.
I came up with a plan. I would close my eyes, open the dictionary to a random page and point. Whatever word I landed on would be the inspiration for my next blog post. It worked. The stories didn’t always present themselves right away, but the dictionary created a conduit for ideas and thoughts to flow, until eventually my fingers found their way to the keyboard and the blog post materialized before my eyes.
Today, I tried again.
Otherness. That was the word that glared back at me.
I glanced heavenward, wondering where the joke was. How appropriate I thought. For my first blog post, I was going to discuss otherness, the state of or fact of being different or other.
Well, yeah, I got that. When I was younger, I felt other. I was bullied; I cried myself to sleep at night, all because of my otherness. I didn’t fit in, but I tried. I tried with everything in me, begging for acceptance, begging for belonging. Eventually, I assimilated enough that I passed for one of them. I had an identity. I became an ideal. I’d made it.
But deep down, I was never truly happy. Deep down, like a restless thrum through my veins, I sensed the otherness, but I would always swallow hard and force it back down. Otherness didn’t fit into the life I was creating.
And I succeeded, at least for a little while. I masterfully created the veil, manufacturing the perfect façade, until the image became so opaque, even I couldn’t see through it.
Until one day — it was a Wednesday — I saw through it. Suddenly and in brilliant relief, for the first time in a long time, I felt the other. And everything was different. I was different.
Everything I’d ever known morphed and flickered in front of me, like a hologram blinking and fading out. My reality was no longer real. I stood at the center of my universe without an anchor, without a compass and without an oar. I was adrift in a sea of otherness.
Who the hell was I? Really?
I made my first journal entry on March 7, 2019. It was my attempt to confront the otherness screaming inside me, to make sense of it, to tame it, to control it. But that quiet thrum had turned into a banshee’s wail, and it was not interested in fitting back into my old-world views.
I sat down, tears streaming down my cheeks, my heart wrenched from within and wrote, “Yesterday, I realized I was gay — it was a Wednesday. I’d like to say it was a shock, and in some ways it was, but in others it was not. But whatever it was, it became real when I spoke it out loud. I was suddenly forced to confront feelings and suspicions that had up until that moment gone unspoken and unacknowledged. It was a reckoning, a time to face the facts, a stop-pussy-footing-around-the-issue kinda moment. And it was 47 years in the making.”
I’d been brought face-to-face with my otherness. Gone was the manicured safety I’d enjoyed for so many years. Here, in this new space, I would have to confront that feeling of otherness when I wanted to walk down the street, my fingers intertwined with those of the woman I would one day love. I’d have to walk into a room, wondering if there would be whispers of disapproval or disbelief. Gone was the security in privilege and conformity. I stood on the other side. I’d become someone else.
I still wasn’t sure how the shoe fit. I just knew my life would never be the same.
In gratitude,
Marissa xo