Best of Blogs #6

Breaking Into the Inner Circle, originally posted 4/23/06.

See the girl in the back, on the right? That's me in 6th grade.

I remember my exact emotions when that picture was being taken. It was nearing the end of a school year filled with failed attempts to fit in. I'd tried everything, and yet never really felt like I was in with any group.

This was the group I really wanted to be in with, because they were the popular girls. So when they posed for a picture, I stood in the back and tried to look like I belonged. But I remember feeling SO out of place in this picture, like they didn't even know I was posing in it with them. I felt like this random extra person in the back who had no reason to be in the picture. It felt like the picture was an inner circle, and I was on the outside.

Tonight, standing around a bonfire at a party, I felt the exact opposite of that emotion. I felt like I'd finally made it in. If the bonfire was an inner circle, I was in it. No longer was I a random extra person in the back; no longer did I feel invisible. And as I stood there, not on the outside of the circle but as a part of it, this picture flashed before my mind, and I just had to smile and bask in the contentment of a lifelong dream of acceptance being realized.