In my last article I mentioned that I had never learned how to 'be a person' because I didn't fit in at first, and then rejected the notion that I needed to while operating on the outskirts of the social order. While this was a pretty miserable existence much of the time, I do think it was a kind of unfortunate privilege which allowed me to be that way--namely, that it was possible at all to get away with.
My social safety blanket came in the form of my family: my parents and younger brothers were always caring and supportive, and I had internalized that these were my people--the good people--and enough for me to retreat into that even when I was absolutely desperate for more and deeper human connection than I could get from them, I was still capable of not actively pursuing those.
People with loving families have it so good in this one way that it's almost a trap. When I was in highschool I used to wonder if it would take someone literally dying to snap me out of myself and make me into someone who NEEDED to 'become human' to survive. After enough time dipping my toes into social interaction through the internet, I finally developed the confidence to try and step out on my own in my mid-20s--and even then, while I was hyper-online, I was also always sporadic and hard to reach, only really involving myself with a tiny number of people that I felt especially connected to.
I likely would feel a ton more privileged had I actually happened my way into a social group that could help with who I was before I ended up how I am. From age 14 onward, I spent the majority of my time in my room on the computer not even talking to my family, because they didn't share my interests or seem to understand what I was going through—and to some extent, people on the internet did; but even there I took way too long to find people and groups that I might've belonged to, had I not spent so much time becoming so individualized that I only now have formed a small and newly-minted tribe.
Not enough people are aware the extent to which they are being allowed to exist because of who they are; the level on which, while you might be able to totally isolate yourself and get by, to be any place where humans are you need to be given a pass by the other humans there—and they can all take it away from you any time. There is a privilege in having places you can show your face and be invited to continue existing; and the less you have that ability, the more you will be forced to change and analyze yourself in order to figure out what is getting you kept out. It can be a terrifying prospect to actually undergo that self-examination, and then have to experiment thru trial and error until you figure out how to get people to include you--but if you’re already being allowed to live now, you are already doing it. If you don't feel like you're doing it well enough for that to be true, I encourage you to try five times harder. There will always be someone who had to try even harder than you did, and who did it.