Great thread.

I think the only time I felt I "fit in" was when I was in high school and college because it was easier there to find people with similar interests, mind sets, and life experiences. However, even though I had lots of friends in high school, I never felt "connected" to them, probably because my home life sucked so much. In college, I found it easier to find friends I felt connected to, besides having things in common, but even then, I was usually a loner.

I tried to keep in touch with college friends, but no one reciprocated. I think part of the reason is that we all came from dysfunctional families which can make it hard to maintain stable, long-term relationships. As far as I know, no one from my "crowd" kept in touch with anyone. I think I'm the only person who tried.

But since I got out into "the real world" I've felt like a square peg all the time, in everything, everywhere, and the older I got, the worse it became. Since graduation, I've not made any real friends like I had in school. I never married or had children, which narrows your social possibilities as married people rarely maintain friendships with single people (even though I tried to).

Maybe I feel like a square peg because I was the square peg in my very dysfunctional family which may have cursed me into feeling I'm the square peg no matter what. They say you relate to the world the way you relate to your family. I don't know if this is just a cliché, but I it makes sense to me. I think that when one tries to "make a life" for oneself, this is where family history can really impact your efforts, much more so than when you were in school, which can be kind of a bubble.

--Ceara1010