Summary

The author of the essay expresses a profound sense of alienation and a lifelong search for a place of belonging, despite having a supportive network and basic needs met.

Abstract

In the essay titled "Just An Alien in a Absurd Juggling Act," the author reflects on the feeling of being an outsider on Earth, longing for a place where they truly feel at home. Despite having friends, family, and a spiritual community, the author describes a persistent sense of disconnection, even after exploring various landscapes across North America. They occasionally experience fleeting moments of potential belonging, often triggered by specific scenes in movies or the beauty of nature, but these moments are transient and elusive. The author contemplates whether they are meant to exist in a different reality, questioning if their life is misaligned with a parallel existence that remains just out of reach. The essay also touches on the duality of life, where one presents a functional exterior while internally grappling with the fear of impending chaos.

Opinions

The author feels a deep-seated sense of not belonging, despite having a supportive social structure and meeting basic needs.
There is a distinction made between the author's sense of alienation and common mental health discussions about belonging.
The author has explored diverse environments within North America but has not found a place that evokes a profound sense of homecoming.
Moments of potential belonging are often sparked by cinematic experiences or natural beauty, though they are fleeting.
The author ponders the possibility of their true place of belonging existing in a parallel reality or dimension.
There is an internal struggle described between maintaining a facade of normalcy and the underlying anxiety that life is precariously held together.
The essay suggests that the author's existence might be fundamentally "out of skew" with their current reality.
The author invites readers to join them in writing for Medium and offers

Non-fiction Essay

Just An Alien in a Absurd Juggling Act

Trying to fit in somewhere here on this planet

Have you ever wondered if you are an alien?

An honest-to-goodness person from another place or time, or another galaxy?

This may sound strange to some of you, but I have never found a place where I felt deep down in my bones that I belonged. I actually hope some of you might know what I’m talking about, because that would mean I’m not as alone as it feels sometimes.

To be fair, I haven’t traveled extensively and I’ve never been off of the North American continent. But inside its boundaries, I have been to both coasts, both borders and most every state.

I have been in forests, deserts, mountains and oceanside; and although the ocean calls to something deep inside me, I’ve never had that soul-stirring sense of homecoming in any of those places.

That ‘take a deep breath and ahh, I’m finally home’ feeling.

That ‘this is what I’ve been searching my whole life for’ feeling.

Sometimes, if a movie soundtrack is just melancholic enough in an epic scene, I might get a fleeting glimpse of a place and think, is that it? Is that the place I really belong?

While driving down a wooded country lane, around a bend I see a carefully tended meadow with the sunlight shining just right and think, could this be it? This might be it.

But the feeling melts away and doesn’t persist.

Just once I’d like to have the feeling of absolute and total belonging.

The internet contains a lot of mental health information about persons who don’t have a sense of belonging.

This is not the same sense of not belonging that I feel.

I have friends, family, and support from a spiritual family (despite being introverted). I have a physical home and just enough income to provide for my basic needs, and gratitude for all of this. Truly.

Most of the time, I distract myself with work and entertainment, yet the feeling of needing something — something more — niggles at the back of my mind.

In the same way the movie The Matrix questioned the nature of reality, I wonder if this other place, that I’ve only glimpsed out of the corner of my eye, is where I was really meant to be.

Could it be that my entire existence is out of skew because where I belong is on a parallel track and those tracks will never cross?

Is this what it feels like to live life on two levels?

The first one where you convince yourself and others that everything is fine and you are keeping all of your juggling balls in the air.

On the level just below is the worry that things might be slowly unraveling, that something is seriously wrong and you’re one dropped ball from finding out that everything was being held together with baling wire and duct tape.

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