Belonging

You do not belong is just wrong.

Yes, you might dress differently,
You might act, eat, sleep, walk or look differently.
You might love, you might think,
You might perceive of the world differently.

But different than who?
Are you different than ‘us’?
And who then, is ‘we’?

There is supposedly no us without them
And separation thus imminent when
All we really had to see
Is that there are so many different groups of ‘we’,
That also if differences might be more apparent, every you and me
Could quite easily become a ‘we’.

You do always belong in a way,
Don’t listen to them when they say that you don’t
Because they won’t stop saying this to you
Until you realise for yourself

That you do. That you do belong.

The only advise I can give to you today is to stay strong.
Stay yourself, don’t let others categorise you and put you into a shelve.
Don’t conform to any boxes until you want to. That’s what I didn’t do.

For a long time, I let other define who I was supposed to be.
Thought that that way I would finally belong but, big surprise, I was wrong.

I let myself be nicely categorised. 
Familiarised myself with being straight.
Familiarised myself with fitting into that teeny tiny box.
Being queer had for me not yet been conceptualised.

Seeing my 15-year-old self now
I don’t know how I was able to keep this charade up that long
For the sole wish to belong.

I started belonging long after wanting to belong.

And how great did it feel,
To finally break free,
From that teeny tiny box,
From that shelve I let myself be put into,

To finally stay true
To no one else
But myself.