Walking Alone

It was never going to be an exciting life. I should have realised that from the start, or at least from the time I found myself making up quadratic equations in my head for my own entertainment. I should have known then that I would not be the action-hero type.

I was no wimp though, bigger and stronger than most of the people I knew, I was never bullied or picked on. It was more that I never could fit in with those around me. They seemed to exist almost on a different planet, I felt like a foreigner, newly arrived, who does not speak the language or know the customs. I felt like someone who has arrived in a small insular village where the locals regard outsiders with suspicion.

That was not unusual though, as far as I could see there were probably more teenage outsiders than insiders, or so it seemed from the books, TV and films I saw. Or maybe it was more that I was always drawn to outsiders, found something there that I could not find on the inside.

I still am a loner, though, even after all these years; a loner, but not lonely, not very social but not anti-social. I am not scared to be alone, or to do my own thing, regardless to who is with me or where I am. I do not feel the social pressure to conform, to keep up with the Joneses, to do the latest popular thing.

If anything, I found that trying to fit it, trying to conform was harder for me than being alone, on the outside, looking in. I was always happy walking my own path and find my own route to that place where I’d always wanted to be.