To “fit in” –  “to feel that you belong to a particular group and are accepted by that group”   (Cambridge University Dictionary)

When we are young fitting in can feel critical and to fit in it means we need to follow the herd. To stand out is to be different and being different isn’t good, it leads to questions, perhaps less friends and ultimately can make you feel outcast.

It’s not about feeling popular, it’s about belonging.

Yet what we don’t think about is that we are all individuals, and we are all striving for the same thing – all trying to fit in and all learning what that means to us at an age and time when everything becomes more, well, a lot.

Watching the recent Fitting In movie gave me a chance to reflect on what this meant for me and what it means to me now.

There was a lot that I could relate to in the movie.

That feeling. Wishing and hoping that it wasn’t happening to me.

At 17, I didn’t have any grand designs to be popular, but I did want to feel like I fit in somewhere.

With the diagnosis came an uncertainty I was unprepared for.  I didn’t feel the same anymore.  I wasn’t sure I was me.  I remembered, soon after the diagnosis that it all felt a bit like an outer body experience.

I was continuing on of course but that I was somehow observing myself doing so rather than being truly present. I wanted nothing more than to feel “normal” and that to me was being like all my friends, yet I was stuck worrying about what MRKH actually meant.  Would I ever feel “normal” again.

Some in our community have felt less like a woman after diagnosis.  I admit that I have never felt that.  I just felt different, and I didn’t know how to manage being 17 and not feeling like I was fitting in and could relate to my peers.

I went to an all girls school.  The pressure to be popular or at the very least “not unliked” was important.  There was an element of conformity, to conform was safer than to be different.  To be different could provoke questions, bullying or other.  Teenagers can be cruel to each other, finding their voices themselves with a lot of emotion and pressure can lead to unpleasant comments, feelings and to be honest it just didn’t feel quite worth it to be different.  So I pretended I was the same.

To feel different at 17 and not be able to relate to what my friends were going through was tough.  What I didn’t realise at the time was that we all go through stuff and that we were all striving to be “normal”, all just trying to fit in, in our own way and none of us are really talking about those difficulties openly because it’s just not the “done thing” and can end up outing us as being different.

As I grew up, fitting in meant taking action to feel better.  I chose to go through dilation as a step that for me felt like positive action towards feeling like I thought everyone my age felt.  I thought by doing that somehow everything would feel good again and the other stuff would come later.

Did it help me fit in?  Well no, not really.  But it helped me feel more like me.

The trouble is, fitting in, is so much more than feeling like your peers, it’s not about being “popular”, it’s about finding the space you feel comfortable, relaxed and importantly safe to be unequivocally you.

It sounds like the most obvious thing when you think about it, yet it is the hardest feeling to find at a time when you feel so different to others.

If only I knew at 16/17/18 what I know now and could reflect on things differently. But we aren’t taught that.  Instead, we as individuals, and partly also because of society, feel the pressure not to be different.  Because it’s “bad” to be different.  Being different means we don’t conform yet it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Seeing my friends’ daughters (and sons) growing up now and having their own teenage challenges but seemingly taking them in their stride, I feel for them but I applaud them at the same time. I truly hope they hold on to the power of their own uniqueness.

I love this slogan of clothing company, Rein Love, in Tromsø where I live – “Don’t follow the herd, stay wild”.

A lesson to us all to be true to ourselves whatever and wherever life takes us.  That’s no mean feat but to remember to be ourselves is not just something to say to one another, its so important for us to feel ourselves and find our sense of belonging.

Charlie xx