💭 When openness becomes a threat

What happens when your way of seeing the world makes you unacceptable to others? I’ve spent years navigating spaces where my refusal to fit neatly into boxes has made me a target. This isn’t just about feeling awkward in social settings—it’s about the deep dissonance that happens when expansive thinking collides with rigid mindsets.

I’ve noticed a pattern—when I’m in spaces dominated by closed-minded thinking, my open-mindedness is often seen as a threat. My questions become dangerous. My curiosity becomes problematic. My willingness to see multiple perspectives becomes a liability. What I’ve come to recognize is that the issue isn’t always personal—sometimes the space itself is too small to hold someone who thinks expansively.

The more I reflect on it, the more I realize that I often don’t fit into environments shaped by closed-minded, limited thinking. But also that I am someone who’s never wanted to fit in to any persona, place or thing. This connects to something deeper I’ve been exploring around compliance and oppression. There’s a specific kind of pressure that shows up in environments shaped by rigid beliefs, especially when those beliefs are paired with ignorance and lack of education. People start expecting you to comply—not just with rules, but with how they think you should live, act, believe, and even express yourself. And when you don’t? You’re treated badly. Bullied. Outcasted.

💭 I think in context, not conformity

That kind of world has never made sense to me. I’m a contextual thinker. I don’t operate inside a binary of right or wrong—I try to understand why something is the way it is. I question things. I acknowledge my mistakes. I consider that things can be improved, that people can grow, and that collective progress requires self-awareness and care.

But in environments where rigidity and judgment dominate, that kind of thinking causes friction. Every time.

💭 Never liked cliques

I’ve hated cliques. In middle school, high school, and later within local, work, or religious communities—I’ve always resisted them. I never liked the way people grouped up and created invisible walls around who was worthy of their attention, kindness, or empathy.

I’ve always been the kind of person who spends time with every group to get to know everyone. I’ve never believed in sticking to one group for the sake of survival or “belonging”. That mindset, of dividing love and respect based on group identity, has always felt wrong to me. And that’s never going to change.

💭 I never fit into just one space

As a child, I gravitated toward many types of people. I spent time with the art kids, the robotics kids, the musicians, the science nerds. My intention was always to become as well-rounded as possible. I saw how damaging small thinking could be—how quickly people made assumptions based on appearances, stereotypes, or a few surface-level interactions—and I wanted to be nothing like that.

Today, I still resist the urge to identify with a single group. If I had to describe myself, it would be someone who exists in the space between free-thinkers, philosophers, and scientists. I don’t fit into predefined buckets, and I don’t want to. My thinking is interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and committed to understanding complexity.

💭 Isolation isn’t always chosen

One of the hardest parts of being cut off from people I’d known for 15 years is the reality of having to rebuild. Over the past year, I’ve been isolated—not by choice, but by circumstance. I don’t even know how to explain it fully. In this situation… when you’re homeless, you’re forced into isolation. Not metaphorically—literally.

If you can’t afford to stay in one stable place, and if the systems or communities around you have rules that prevent reintegration, then you’re kept apart. The environment I was part of made it clear that I couldn’t return unless I met certain conditions—like having stability in 1 location for x months—before even considering offering “support”. That’s not isolation by choice. That’s isolation imposed on you.

What made it harder was the unspoken boundary that discouraged connecting with anyone outside that circle. So not only was I shut out from the place I’d once belonged to, but I also felt/felt like I couldn’t build new connections either. It created a double isolation—cut off from what I knew, and unsure of how to reach for something new.

The loneliness in that situation is difficult to put into words. It wasn’t about choosing solitude—it was about being systematically excluded and then left to navigate the silence that followed.

💭 The story that stayed with me

One night in Romania, I wrote a piece titled “Put On This Dress.” It wasn’t poetry—it was more of a spoken word stream that poured out of me in a moment of grief. The premise was simple: a girl is told she must wear a dress to be accepted. What no one knew is that she had been harmed in a dress once before, and had silently vowed never to wear one again.

At first, the group around her seemed warm and welcoming. Then came the shift. “You have to wear this dress.” “If you want to belong, wear the dress.” “We care about you—but you must wear the dress.”

It was never about the dress. It was about control. It was about coercing her to fit their mold, regardless of her story or pain. That piece still lingers with me. I didn’t write it to be published or admired—I wrote it to survive. It was the only way I could process the emotional weight of being asked to surrender my identity for the comfort of others.

The others refused to realize that my difference had come from trauma and from just thinking outside of the world and box that they limit themselves to.

💭More to think about

These thoughts feel like the beginning of something larger, something I’ll continue unpacking over time. There is more to say—more I haven’t found the words for yet. Even writing this brought up memories and emotions I hadn’t touched in a long time.

This reflection is unfinished by design. I intend to return to it, build on it, and perhaps turn it into something even deeper. For now, though, this is where I am.