I am going to be completely honest and say that I have pretty much always felt out of place. As a child, as a teenager, a young adult, an adult…I very often felt out of place. Like I didn’t fit in at all.
Some of my first memories of school are of me feeling out of place. That I didn’t fit in with everyone else, I wasn’t like everyone else and I didn’t know why. So, I tried to fit in. That started a lifelong process of trying to fit my square peg into society’s round hole. I always felt this sense of insecurity, as if it was something I was born with rather than learned over time. I don’t know, I just remember feeling that I wasn’t fitting in.
I think part of it was that I wasn’t necessarily interested in a lot of the things the other girls were interested in. I wasn’t necessarily interested in playing kiss chase with the boys at breaktime, for example, I wanted to play out the story I had going on in my head at that time. I remember one was about living in the woods in a cabin, foraging for food and living an extremely rustic life. I have no idea where that came from. I had lots of stories in my head like that, I remember, that I wanted to act out. I’m not sure when I was a child that there was anything especially specific that marked me out as different other than the fact I felt that way. And I don’t really know why.
By the time I went to senior school, though, I had a good reason – I was the only person in my school whose parents were separated. I kid you not, it was 1982 after all and a small school. I was also certainly the only person in school whose father’s girlfriend waited for her outside the school with a knife because I was a ‘threat to their happiness’ so the police had to be called and I had to be kept in school. This was in the first weeks of my being there. I will never know what caused her to do what she did, but it most definitely set me apart from all the others. And the other students mostly all came from reasonably affluent families while for us, it was a huge struggle. So, I had lots to set me apart and I felt all of it. I think also my general disinterest in the things the others were interested in didn’t help, either. I just felt like the odd one out. I had friends in school, I am still in contact with a few of them today via social media, but I just never felt as though I truly fit in. I was the nerd at school as well, the one with the good grades who studied hard, another thing to set me apart. I had an ambition at the time to go to university to study law and become a barrister, and I had my A’ Levels all planned out. That marked me out as different as well and meant I didn’t feel I fit in.
Puberty was brutal for me as with it came the hereditary Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) which meant horrific periods and becoming hirsute – something I didn’t understand at the time, and for which I was bullied. Actually, in senior school, I was bullied for many things. Mostly I suspect because others somehow knew I was just…out of place in life in general.
I didn’t feel as though I fit in with my extended family, either. I wasn’t shy as such, in fact I would say I am not a shy person, I am just…not good at small talk I suppose. It bores me, and I can never think of anything to say. I can respond if someone says something, but I struggle to initiate anything. But get me started on a philosophical debate and I’m all over it. A discussion on politics or history, I’m your person. Small talk while standing around? My mind goes completely blank as to what to say. This is why networking meetings are such torture for me.
I didn’t go to university at 18 in the end, I went to work in the City instead. I sort of fitted in there, though at first I was bullied (again). So, I never felt entirely comfortable after that because I was on my guard. I didn’t mind the work I was doing, it was fine. What I enjoyed the most was being in the City as a place especially when I worked close to the Tower of London. It fed my imagination, and I used to spend a lot of my spare time writing short stories. I never published them, but I was able to unleash my creativity as an outlet as my job was very far from creative! But I love that part of London, I love the energy and the architecture of the most historic part of the capital. I’m very happy to wander around and just soak it all in.
I found that I didn’t feel out of place in my undergraduate university, but I was a fish out of water in my postgraduate university. Mostly because I’m not a radical feminist or a radical socialist. I am a feminist, 100%, but I’m not radical whatever that means. And I am not a radical socialist though I have some views that some people would call socialist. I just don’t like being pigeon-holed with such labels if I’m honest. I was also deeply grieving the death of my beloved grandmother, so didn’t have the headspace to do more than study for my Masters degree and just block out what other people were saying and doing. I did have a release and support network, though, in my then boyfriend and his course mates with whom I got along really well.
University helped me enormously in realising what I love and what I love to do, which helped me to direct my career going forward. I love history, I love writing, and I love being strategic and seeing the bigger picture. I found myself a little bit and it helped me to find my way in a sense. Combining culture with economics was something that for a long time truly sustained me in my career, I loved seeing how areas could be enhanced and improved through culture. How economies could be grown and businesses helped. That’s not to say that I didn’t sometimes feel out of place. I still didn’t have the small talk knack and dreaded networking events though many people thought I thrived in them and enjoyed them. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Socially awkward would sometimes have described me!
I don’t ‘do’ networking events anymore and my life has become rather small in the circles I mix in. Which means I don’t feel so out of place. I don’t have to make small talk because I know the people I am with and I can have all sorts of conversations with them. And I am writing every single day, which I just love. My life isn’t perfect, but I am finally finding a life where I am no longer out of place.
Louisa Simpson 