Those who know me are aware that I have always been (and always will be) an eccentric dresser, influenced by a personal fascination with vintage men’s fashion. It’s a hobby and an artform. Throughout my life, it has provided a lot of fun, creative expression, and even belonging to a uniquely diverse community of other vintage-lovers. However, one day during my Junior year of college, my fashion sense was the root of an unfortunate experience.
Each week, I met an old friend from high school whom I was still very close to for lunch at one of our favorite restaurants on campus. Usually, this friend just kind of ignored what I was wearing because it wasn’t important to him or to our friendship. But on this particular day, it mattered in a bad way. I was wearing a 1970s vintage western button-down shirt, tight jeans, leather oxford shoes, and a new-to-me wide-brim vintage black fedora. When I walked up to give him a high five at our table, my friend laughed out loud.
“WHAT are you WEARING, dude?!” he chortled. “That hat makes you look straight-up Amish. And with the western shirt? It’s too much. I can’t even handle it, haha!” My friend went on to lightly chastise me, albeit in a more serious tone, that dressing so “flamboyantly” is clearly just so I can get attention, which could not be good on a “spiritual level” with me being so plugged into the local campus-church.
In the moment, I just laughed the comment off and didn’t make a big deal about it. Little did my friend know that his words so deeply wounded me that about a week later, I would sell or give away nearly my entire well-curated wardrobe. I quickly replaced my clothing at the thrift store, opting for the blandest button downs, flannels, khakis and jeans I could find. It was weirdly devastating, and made me question my whole identity both socially and religiously. This was the first time I felt like I did not belong in friendship with him, and I got depressed for a few weeks.
Have you ever experienced a situation like this? My friend’s words excluded and humiliated me, even though they may have been meant in light-heartedness. The loss of my sense of belonging to our friendship directly affected my mental health. According to a recent study completed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, I’m not alone. The study’s researchers found that students on campus who reported “lower feelings of belonging” at multiple points in a semester were more likely to experience “more depressive symptoms.”
It’s possible to be in a group of people or in a relationship, but still feel you don’t belong. True belonging requires full acceptance, full affirmation, and full appreciation from the other person or other people in the group. Without these elements, group and relationship dynamics fall apart and people end up getting hurt or hurting themselves. In order to make the world a truly better place for all of us, we must pursue and create belonging for each other, and we must work toward self-acceptance in the absence of belonging.
If you feel like you don’t belong, please know that you have at least one group of caring people to belong with at The Willow Center. You can reach us at 317-852-3690, and we’ll come alongside you and help however we can.
-Written by Chase Cotten, Community Director
