who are you and where do you fit in?

[hatsoff]

Have you sussed who you are and where you fit in society? Everywhere I look I seem to see people who are very confident about their identity. I?m not talking so much about individual identity, more about which identifiable group in society you belong to and from which you draw most of your friends. I?m talking about the highly educated US international civil servants I met at a wedding this weekend; the modern day hippies I saw at Kingston Green Fair who all do incredibly creative things and go to festivals; I?m talking about the latter-day hippies, in their 50s and 60s also at the fair who were running the campaigning stalls; musicians who share a passion for music; journalists who hang around in Islington and have highly intellectual dinner parties; bankers who serve champagne and oysters when their friends come over?am I the only person who hasn't a clue where she fits? Am I the only person who hasn't got a cosy group to be part of? I?ve got friends in every one of those ?categories? and sometimes dread the thought of them meeting. Maybe I'm strange. Or maybe I'm naive to think life is ever that simple. What about you lot?

Well, Hatsoff, my DH is a journalist (& I work in the media too) & we live in Islington, but I certainly don't feel as though I fit in anywhere. There are loads of yummy mummies / professional mummies round here & they are VERY cliquey. At the other extreme, there are lots of extremely young teenage mothers who hang around Highbury Fields playground in packs & are, quite simply, terrifying. Actually, I find the yummy-mummies terrifying too!
On the bank holiday weekend, the park was deserted because all the middle class people were at their 2nd homes in Southwold & this REALLY irritated me! I don't know why. Envy I suppose, although we could afford that lifestyle if we chose.
What amazes me about this thread is that there are obviously lots of us who feel quite isolated & that we don't fit anywhere. I bet we'd all hate eachother if we met up!

scamp, no they were at their second homes in dorset, braying on the beach, taking up all the cafe space, mooning outside the estate agents and refusing to reverse their absurdly huge cars down country lanes

ROFL, Enid. I get the impression you are speaking from local experience there!

& don't get me started on 4WD in town...Aaaargh! (We have an estate car though - is that not just as bad?)

I have a 4 wheel drive and I am damned well incensed by that!

Not really !

They will probably come out of the woodwork soon though - run and hide!

I don't fit in with any particular group. And I don't mind. It's taken me a while to realise that the person I am is the best person for me to be, but it is true .

HMC, I was terrified when I read your first post!
Picc, that is a lovely. philosophical thought & one I shall keep with me.

Ha ha ha! - but I only scared you for 30 seconds. I did post to clarify very quickly afterwards.

Should have kept it going for longer....

Ah, 'twould be cheap sport, HMC - I am very gullible!

I fell for it!

estate cars allowed. Actually four wheel drives allowed (although laughable for people that live in towns) but people that cannot reverse them and inch forward towards you even though they are about a metre in front of a passing space...

I fit into our group of friends who are mainly in their 30's, married/partnered with young kids, fairly left-wing, eco-friendly, just enough/reasonable amount of money to live on. But having said that my partner's a woman and pretty much all the friends I'm referring to are straight! Our gay friends tend to be miles away, single and childless. So we kind of do and don't fit into a couple of different groups!

He he he! - don't encourage me, I might do it again over something else (I am soooo bored at work)

me too

(bored at work) but alone so can surf msnet and eat biscuits

no, i dont "fit in" anywhere are dont really want to, im an individual and people should take me as they find me, if they cant..well tough.(maybe this is why i have no friends!!!)

Well I always kindof felt I was one of a few who didn't feel like I fitted in anywhere... nice to see that I'm not. I haven't read all the replies but wondered if anyone ever had thought about why they didn't fit in?

I had presumed it was because of my background, father from a really rough Birmingham council estate (not that I ever knew him), mother from a wealthy, slightly prestigious (for want of a better word) family and grew up in a manor house. Mum remarried someone from a poor background who made it big and we had flashy lifestlye in Bath with private schools... til they divorced when moved to west woolly wales and lived as a single parent family in state schools... and she forced us to become jehovahs witnesses eeeek!

I have always felt different, had a few VERY different career paths which i am proud of, travelled extensively and lived abroad.. now i have what some would call a "posh" accent but i am a low income self employed single mum ... living in woolly wales again

Don't know where I fit in, don't even want to go there. Definitely don't have anything in common with hatsoff's modern day hippies at the Kingston Green Fair. From my observations of this group, seeing them browse around my stall all day, they are a breed apart

I know where I don't belong. I don't know where I do belong. It doesn't bother me at all

still going then? good. Interesting to see the 4WD diversion, which kind of wasn't a diversion - coz didn't it show the way in which we're guilty of putting people in categories by virtue of more obvious characteristics like what car they drive? And I bet the cliquey yummy mummies of Islington don't actually realise that they're yummy mummies. DH and I kind of fit in Dot1's ish group I guess, with the exception that we're probably not as green as we should be (washable napppies, the wormery, walking to school 8 times out of 10 and ecover products pale into insignificance at the side of the car mileage and the flights) and that DH is a banker. I know some people don't believe in the existence of lefty bankers but they dooooo exist. Not just dh either. And Elizabeth B - my 74 year old mum says she's still waiting to feel like a grown up.

Im a tough mother and I admit it.

If I ever caught my DD's smoking,drinking or having sex under-age, I would smack them.Most people think smacking is wrong, but I'll tell you one thing. After a good smack they'll never do it again!

So I think I fit in the ''Tough But Loveable Mummy'' category, if there is one of them.

I have never fit in anywhere. Like Ghosty I have travelled a lot and moved many, many times. I sometimes really wished I fit in. I used to feel that I hadn't found my home until we moved back to SA. It took a long time but in the last couple of weeks I have started feeling as if it's home .

I am also feeling as if I fit in for the first time in my life. We have made several good friends and I am really active in the school. Certainly not yummy-mummy more involved and happy mummy. I am starting to come to terms with the fact that's what I am for the foreseeable future and I actually quite like it. So although I don't "belong" to a particular group, I am finally feeling as if I just belong.

Awww,

Im happy for you babe!

Mumof10, do you have DSs to whom you would apply the same rules?

Funny thing about people worrying about their diverse friends meeting. When I had a significant event that I wanted to invite different friends to as well as various members of my family (scary scary concept) everyone got on like a house on fire and the family members commented greatly on "how good looking and nice all Cam's friends are" and my friends all commented on "how nice and good looking all the family members were"

Yes, of course!

It probably sounds like I don't care about my DS's but I used my DD's as an example.

Sorry!

I have a variety of friends who I like for different reasons and they obviously all have qualities that I look for in people to be my friends. They are all different but thats what makes my life interesting, but although they have different backgrounds, careers, relationships and interests the one thing that would bind us all, that we could sit together all night and talk about are our beautiful, loveable children - so we all fit in in that area of our lives.