I like to think that after survival, and then spreading your seed, the need to belong to _______ is one of the biggest motivators for humanity.

Even a self declared, anti-social misfit like myself has the need to “belong” somewhere and someplace.

It’s been a driver of my engine for about 40 years.

I wanted to belong to my parents after I found out that they picked me out of the cabbage patch.

I wanted to belong to the first man that I ever loved… and every man and woman thereafter.

I wanted to belong to the PPD – to protect and serve and make this world a better place.

I wanted to belong at AFSCME, to walk among the movers and the shakers, the powerful and those whose job it was to empower.

I wanted to belong in Mary Kay.  I pinned photos of that pink Cadillac all over the damn place, almost to the point where I lost sight of everything else but the emblem and the color.  For the record it is an ass ugly color…for real… but it was a sign that I belonged.

When I stepped into the limelight so to speak in this kinky internet universe, I wanted to belong… to someone.

Anyone.

I was a stag member of the Noah’s Ark world and it hurt.

My need to belong is not unusual, nor is my inability to understand that yes I do belong even while I stick out like Pinocchio’s nose if he were a broadcaster on Faux News.

Living in that dual place where you both belong and don’t belong makes life hard out here for a pimp…..because well we do want to belong even when we say we do not.

We can jump up and down and say it doesn’t mean shit, but it does.  It adds to our validation, even when we reject that we need validation.

We can be proud of our unicorn status, while wishing that a horse was just a horse and that we don’t have this big assed horn on the top of our heads.

I told someone recently that things happen just as they should and we get what we get when the universe understands we are ready for it.  Hell I say that a lot you can really apply that to any situation if you like. This once though was about how the universe sent me a friend I didn’t  know that I needed, to hold me through pain that I didn’t know was coming, and to deliver me from evil that should not exist.

I’ve gotten better at accepting this, understanding that I belong to the universe and she doesn’t hate me, she simply moves around me to deliver to me what I need when I think it is something else that I want.

It never stops me from wanting something else.  I think that is also human nature, a little bit of greed if you will….but it does allow me to appreciate in ways I’ve ignored historically that my needs are met.

I always question if I belong in this moment in time, sometimes to my own detriment.  I often question if I belong in the fortune or the despair that take turns saying hello at any given moment.

What I am learning though is that the fortune is saying hello much more frequently, and I question her presence a little less each time.

I rarely see myself through the eyes of others, because I don’t belong in that vizion of what they see. I am learning though that those who care the most about me see through my projections, into my essence, and they embrace it because they see what they desire mirrored back to them.

I am learning that I can see myself as sexy, while someone else sees me as beautiful, and that both belong to me.

I am learning that I can see myself as anti social while someone else sees me as loving and that both belong to me.

The toughest obstacle right now though is to see myself as something other than what’s defined me for my adult life…. his … and belonging to that place that exists in reality…. theirs.

While the universe does not make mistakes, understanding that it was not a mistake [the last 16 years or so] – yet it is also not the place I live in now – and it is okay to want something else – AND it is okay to want that too, AND living in the moment is what I need to perfect.

That needs a little more meditation and practice.  If I am being honest, I can do both.  If I am being honest it is not simple….it is fucking hard on the real.

Yet, overall and for the better of all, leaving what I had is the right thing to do.  Nurturing what I have is the right thing to do.  Right isn’t always a simple thing, but when all is said and done what is right always prevails… or at least I hope it does.

 

Aphrodite Brown