Odd One Out

My family is very homogenous. They're Catholic's who go to Church every week. They love to watch football and baseball. They are all very extroverted and enjoy going to parties and seeing all of their friends for hours on end.

I, on the other hand, am none of these things. I turned my back on the Catholic Church ages ago. The only sport I enjoy is volleyball, and that is because I played it. I am an introvert who would rather stay inside and read or watch TV than go to a party and awkwardly converse with people I don't really know.

From a young age I have realized I was different from my family. I was always a big reader. I would stay inside with stacks of books and read for hours on end without interruption, getting lost in the worlds of Nancy Drew or Harry Potter. Now, my mom liked to read too, but she was far more casual than I was. I can't count the number of times that my parents told me to put down the book and go outside. On the other hand, my sisters were always outside playing, making friends around the neighborhood, going to see their friends from school. With them, our parents had to tell them to come inside because dinner was ready.

When I was younger my family tried to get me to play soccer. I hated it. One time, my aunt came to visit from Maine and watch me play, and I ran off the field because of how much I despised the game. My parents were furious, yelling at me because I was disrespecting my team. Another time my mom wanted me to go to soccer camp, which she had paid for already. I had told her when she told me about it that I didn't want to go. She didn't care. My sisters were going, so apparently I had to too. I refused to go to that camp and simply saved up and paid her back to cost. If she had just listened to me, she could've saved us so much trouble.

I remember one one day when my family was watching football on the TV; I hadn't even realized football was a professional sport. I thought it was just something we played in gym class for fun. Apparently, they had watched this game for years, and I'd had no idea because of how out of the loop I was.

For a long time when I was younger, my family tried to make me more like them. They couldn't understand me as I was, to they tried to make me into what they understood. They would push me to be more extroverted, they constantly signed me up for camps, they did whatever they could to foster interest in sports over books.

And for awhile, it worked. I ended up playing soccer when I was older to appease my family. I tried to go out more, be more extroverted. I did what I could to be around my friends more and always tried to go with my family to parties or dinners.

And it was exhausting. I hated it so much. I wasn't being. What was the point of pleasing my family if I wasn't pleasing me? If I had to be someone else to fit in, what was the point?

The truth is, I like being different from my family. I don't want to be like them. I despise religion of all sorts (for myself at least), sports are just not my cup of tea, and I would rather stay in with a good book than go to a party any day of the week. Fitting in wasn't worth it if it left me miserable. It only took me eighteen years to realize that.