Social Outcast Narrative

Although I was born in the United States, I have spent the first half of my life living in other countries. As glamorous as that may sound, it is far from that; instead, it had made me feel like a social outcast. All this moving around did not allow me to establish a firm cultural foundation, and I found myself being very introverted, shy, and reclusive; I just never really “fit in” anywhere I lived. To make matters worse, my parents were so oblivious to this; I felt like I could not even talk to them about how I felt. I was born in New York in 1969 and the following year my mother decided she wanted us to move to her home place in Switzerland. We lived there for two years until my father decided he could not acclimate to their customs; so he reached out to his sister, Nancy, who lived in London. Nancy helped my father find a job as a superintendent of an apartment in which we eventually ended up living. I lived in London from the age of three, to the age of eight. During that time I had a difficult time making any friends. I was always told that I was different, but I never understood why. I remember my first day of school a child began to cry because she missed her mother. She got so much attention from the teachers that I decided I wanted some of that attention, so I began to cry. Instead, I was yelled at, and told that I was just copying the other little girl. One day one of the teachers called me aside. She showed me a picture which was taken of all the students in my class. She pointed at me and told me that I ruined the picture because I was the only one not smiling. Needless to say, my self-esteem went way down the drain at that stage. I was called names and bullied in the school playground because I had an accent; I was different. When I was eight years old, my father told us that we had to move to Ireland because granddad could no longer take care of the farm. …show more content…
Part of me was happy to get away from the mean people in London, but another part of me was scared. I remember my first day at school was strange. In the classroom, initially no one wanted to sit next to me; but outside when we had our breaks, all the children followed me everywhere asking me questions. Where are you from? Why do you talk funny? Why are your eyes dark? This lasted for several weeks. Eventually, I did make a few friends there, with whom I am still friends with to this day. When I became eighteen, my mom bought me an airline ticket to America. I thought finally, I am going back to my birthplace; a place where I will “fit in.” Boy, was I wrong! At first it was not so noticeable because I lived in an Irish community in the city, and I was already acclimated to the Irish culture. It would have been easier for me to just stay there to avoid any differences by associating with people of similar backgrounds (Harvey & Allard, 2012, p. 41). It was not until I moved out to the suburbs that I was treated differently. I worked as a nanny and felt like I was treated like the Irish nanny, not as a person. Luckily, the doctors I started working for were very supportive. Without