I was born in 1956, the middle child in a family of five—my mother, father, older sister, younger sister, and me. We were a typical lower-middle-income household, not wealthy by any stretch, but we had what we needed. Life, for the most part, was content, even happy. Yet, for as long as I can remember, I carried a quiet sense of not quite belonging—not just in my family, but in the world around me. It wasn’t dramatic or rebellious, nothing I could easily pin down. I simply saw things differently. My thoughts worked in ways that didn’t align with my family’s, and their interests—things they enjoyed with enthusiasm—often left me indifferent.
Growing up in the late ‘50s and ‘60s, I found my escape in the flickering glow of old sci-fi and horror movies, especially the ones from the 1950s. Every afternoon, I’d rush home to catch a local TV show hosted by a man named Barney Bean. Around 4:00 p.m., he’d introduce a lineup of space adventures and monster flicks—classics to me back then, though they’d likely be dismissed as low-budget B- or C-grade films today. To my ten-year-old self, they were pure magic. Those stories of distant planets and eerie creatures sparked my imagination in ways nothing else could. Lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, or waking up in the morning, I’d wonder if I’d been left on Earth by an alien family who’d one day return for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family—I did, and I knew they loved me—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t truly fit.
That sense of being an outsider followed me through life. School was a chore, not because I couldn’t handle the work, but because I felt disconnected from the other kids. I had a few friends here and there, but even they never quite felt like “my people.” Later, at work, the pattern repeated. I could do my job, be friendly with coworkers, and occasionally find someone I clicked with, but more often than not, I moved through the world like a visitor—comfortable enough, but never fully at ease. People didn’t reject me or see me as strange; they just seemed to sense I was… different. My perspective, my way of seeing things, rarely matched the crowd’s. For decades, this was my reality—a quiet, persistent feeling of being out of place.
Everything changed in 2006, when I turned 50. I don’t recall exactly how it happened—likely thanks to the internet, which I’d only recently begun to explore—but I stumbled across something transformative: the concept of introversion and extroversion. Intrigued, I dug deeper, taking personality tests, reading articles, and reflecting on my life. The more I learned, the clearer it became: I wasn’t just an introvert; I was a textbook case. Every trait, every characteristic fit me like a glove. Then, another realization hit me like a ton of bricks: my entire family—my parents and both sisters—were classic extroverts.
Suddenly, it all made sense. I’d spent my life as an introvert in an extrovert’s world—not just within my family, but beyond it. The way everything seemed built for others, the subtle distance I felt from people, the quiet way I’d been treated as “off” but not broken—it wasn’t my imagination. I wasn’t defective or alien; I was simply wired differently, a square peg in a round-hole society. This discovery didn’t erase the past or make me suddenly fit in, but it reshaped how I saw myself. For the first time, I understood why I’d always felt out of place—and, more importantly, I realized I didn’t need to change to belong.
At last, I felt comfortable in my own skin. I no longer needed to wait for some long-lost cosmic family to whisk me away to a place where I’d fit. The world and everyone in it didn’t need to shift to accommodate me—I was okay, just as I was. Right here on Earth, I’d finally found my place.