The Outsider
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I noticed certain groups and cliques in high school. Kids banded together based on tribe, race, and popularity. This trend started in late primary school but the bonds solidified in high school. I think for the most part, I was usually an outsider because I would only be in a school for less than a year (I was always moving to new cities and countries) and never shared the same history and inside jokes with my fellow classmates. I used to switch back and forth between groups of friends. I never liked to belong to only one group. I think I was happy to not get caught up in the drama that went on in each group. Thankfully, being an outsider, I never had enough emotional investment to be included in the drama. I always found the high school spectacle of popularity contest and gossip to be overrated, to say the least. I noticed some kids would band with certain groups just to prevent themselves from falling to the bottom of the social food chain. Let’s face it. Who wants to be the freak sitting alone in the corner of the lunch room? And when I say freak, I mean the kid who doesn’t appear to have any allies or belong to any tribe, thus, in the theatre of war that is high school, is considered no other than afreak. I may have been considered an outsider, but never an outcast. I much preferred to have close friendships with a couple of people. Looking back, I realize in each school I had one or two best friends, but never a small group of friends I could call my group. Even though I have a group from grade 11/12 high school in Canada, I’ve still never felt a huge bond with that group. I’ve continued to make new friends through work and Uni. I think whenever I hang out with that high school group in the group environment – when we’re all in attendance – it feels almost ritualistic and somewhat formal. I’m probably not making sense. I just find I won’t have a real conversation with them in the group environment because our dialogue merely consists of inside jokes and social pleasantries like “How have you been? What’s new?” interspersed with counterfeit laughter. I’ve never been one for small talk. I’d rather stick my head in an oven a la Sylvia Plath. But whenever I’m spending time with one of my friends from that group, one on one, I find the conversation to be much more enjoyable. In an earlier post I likened myself to the stubborn black sheep of the herd, but I think it would also be accurate to say I’m the lone wolf out of the pack. The outsider. The loner. Am I a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
