I don’t know if I’ve ever actually “fit in.” Not once. Not at school, not at work, not in those networking events where everyone suddenly becomes an expert on small talk and charcuterie boards. If life were a shape sorter, I’d be the square peg with slightly scuffed corners from all the years of trying to wedge myself into round holes that were clearly labeled “not for you.”
And for most of my life, I thought that was my fault.
I thought maybe if I could just be a little rounder—softer around the edges, easier to digest—people would stop looking at me like I’d read from the wrong script. I thought maybe belonging was something you earned through assimilation, through quiet compliance, through the exhausting art of mirroring everyone else’s tone, pace, and preferences. I was sure that if I just kept trying, someone would eventually hand me a sticker that said “Congratulations, you fit!”
Spoiler: no one ever did.
Instead, what I got were moments that looked like belonging on the outside but felt hollow inside. The smiling-through-it kind of moments. The laughing-because-everyone-else-is moments. The “sure, that’s fine” moments when nothing about it was actually fine.
The thing about pretending to fit is that you can get really good at it. It becomes muscle memory. You start editing yourself automatically, like your personality has built-in autocorrect. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too sensitive. Don’t ask the question no one else is asking. Don’t wear the weird shoes. Don’t show them the messy, real parts that actually make you interesting.
Eventually, you forget what unedited you even sounds like.
And that’s when it hits—the quiet ache that something is off, like you’re speaking fluent “them” but have forgotten your own native language.
Fitting in is performance art. Belonging is relief.
There’s such a difference between the two, but for most of my life, I couldn’t tell. Fitting in felt like safety. It felt like control. It felt like I was doing the “right” thing, even when my gut was whispering, this isn’t it. Because let’s be honest—fitting in gets you applause. It gets you approval. It gets you invited to the table.
But belonging? Belonging asks you to bring your full, unfiltered self to the table—and risk the fact that someone might not like it.
Belonging says, “You don’t have to change your shape.”
Fitting in says, “We’ll like you once you do.”
I think for so long, I was terrified of being unlikable. Not hated—just too different. The kind of different that makes people tilt their heads in polite confusion. And that fear made me shrink. I turned my corners inward until they stopped poking anyone, and I mistook that numbness for peace.
It wasn’t peace. It was exhaustion.
There’s a particular kind of fatigue that comes from performing a version of yourself all day long. You know that feeling when you get home and immediately exhale like you’ve been holding your breath in public? That’s the sound of your body remembering what belonging feels like. It’s the moment your shoulders drop, your words loosen, and your laugh comes out unfiltered—the laugh that snorts or wheezes or comes in a pitch that’s just slightly too loud.
That’s belonging.
It’s not the fancy table. It’s the inside joke. It’s not the curated vibe. It’s the moment someone says, “You too?” and you realize you’re not as alone as you thought.
And once you’ve tasted it—even a little—you can’t go back to pretending that fitting in is enough.
There’s this line from The Velveteen Rabbit that I can’t stop thinking about. You probably know it—the part where the Skin Horse tells the Rabbit, “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
That’s belonging, isn’t it? The kind of love, the kind of life, that wears you down in all the right ways. Not polished, not perfect, not pretending. Just real. And maybe that’s what belonging actually is—finally being worn in enough that you don’t have to keep performing smoothness. The round holes may never understand it, but that’s okay. The square ones will.
Because fitting in requires you to contort. Belonging requires you to stay still.
And standing still in your truth—especially when everyone else is shifting to match—is terrifying. It’s vulnerable. It’s saying, “Here I am, corners and all. Take it or leave it.” And maybe they leave it. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll find someone else out there holding their own awkward shape, looking for a square hole too.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that belonging isn’t found. It’s built.
It’s built in the moments when you stop apologizing for the way you think or the speed at which you move. It’s built when you stop auditioning for approval in rooms that were never going to give you a callback. It’s built when you recognize that your edges were never the problem—they were the design.
And maybe the reason you’ve never “fit” is because you were meant to create something new.
You were meant to start the group, lead the team, write the story, paint the wall, say the thing. You were meant to make other square pegs feel less alone. To show them that belonging isn’t about rounding yourself off—it’s about realizing you were never a mistake in the first place.
Sometimes belonging looks like walking away from a room that doesn’t get you. Sometimes it looks like starting over somewhere smaller, quieter, or slower. Sometimes it looks like being the first one to stop pretending.
I used to think that fitting in was the goal and belonging was a luxury. Now I know it’s the other way around.
Fitting in is what you do to survive.
Belonging is what you do to live.
And somewhere in between, if you’re lucky—or stubborn enough to keep trying—you realize that the hole you’ve been searching for might not exist yet. Maybe it’s waiting for you to build it from scratch.
So that’s what I’m doing now. Not sanding my edges down anymore. Not apologizing for the shape of my story. Just learning how to build a square hole and make peace with the fact that I was never meant to fit neatly into someone else’s round mold.
Because the world doesn’t need more people who fit.
It needs more people who belong.
And I’m finally starting to believe that includes me.
Rachel L. Richard is a small-town farm girl turned suburbanite, a delightfully irreverent optimist, Mrs & Mama, floppy dog ear scratcher, lifelong learner, channel surfer, wanderer, believer, occasional creative, out-of-practice musician, cupcake addict, book devourer, and lover of all people.
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