Sunday, June 22, 2014

Belonging--a journal entry

There's an old Blind Melon song called No Rain. If I recall correctly, a little girl wearing a bumblebee suit goes around looking for the place she will fit in and at the end of the son, she finds a group of people who look like her.

I've been that girl most of my life. Belonging often comes from inside like happiness does but sometimes one just wants to feel at peace with one's surroundings and the world.

Perhaps being a first generation immigrant precludes that from happening. Despite living in this neighborhood for over a decade, I still feel like the odd brown woman walking down the much pounded pavement, wondering if people are making comments about my foreignness.

It's not just about appearance. I look on with wonder at the modern Facebook way of living, of laying it all out for people to see. And I cringe. Am I just old? I always was an intensely private person so adopting to that lifestyle is impossible for me. As for being part of the Indian diaspora, seems there's two factions in the states--the Hindu faction and the Bollywood faction. Of the two, perhaps the Hindu faction would make sense.

I have few friends in the area. The people I like don't seem to want the sort of intense friendship and closeness that is my brand. I appreciate that too. I can be quite a pill, I suppose with my intensity. I see it in my little one so I get it.

But it would be nice to belong, to feel one with the surrounding. The moments are there but they're fleeting.

Questions about ethnic identity and race I used to think trivial if one felt at peace with oneself but I was wrong. As I grow older, I seem to crave the company of Indians. I crave the language, the phrases of comfort, the less guarded ways of communication. But I have no Indian friends in the area any more.

Going back to India was supposed to be my answer to all my issues but even there I didn't fit in. I was too American there. I am too Indian here. A total misfit.

Obviously the reader is rolling her eyes at this point going, "gf, this means the problem is with you." Of course it is, I know that. I'm a misfit not a fool.

The kind of people I would like as friends must be modern and yet old fashioned, open minded yet conservative. Liberal and down to earth. I find some older people that way. They have fewer hangups, fewer artificialities. They focus on the bigger questions. And so my best friend is 70 years old.

I won't be around forever, she warns me and I realize that.

I must try and get out there and find people I can relate to and who can relate to me. Good luck with that, I know.

And hard as it is I will try and keep up with the times so I'm thinking MeetUp. I have a feeling given the way I stipulate membership to my group, as always, I shall be its sole member.