Long Tail - March 3 2024

 

Long Tail

March 3 2024

Most of of my life has been lived

in a state of bewilderment.

My nose pressed against the glass

on the outside looking in.

As if, like an anthropologist from Mars

I’d been dropped down on Earth,

sent to observe

the ways of the world

and try to understand.

Performing

as close to normal as I can.

Faking it

until I make it

then waiting for it to feel

like it should,

which it rarely did;

presuming this must be how it works

for everyone else.

But fitting-in is tiring,

and even when it works

never feels quite right.

How perverse

that what’s easy for me

is hard for everyone else

and vice versa.

Consigned, as it were

to be different in most things,

far out

under the long tail

of the standard bell curve.

Hard to believe, I used to be smug,

often wondering

what all the fuss was about,

bemused by all the sturm und drang

of human relationship.

Had no way to know

just how much I'd missed

or how wrong I was.

I'm much older now,

know so much more

am more self-aware;

but still feel invisible

remain essentially unchanged.

I’m not sure how it helps,

but seems important to know

if I was I born this way

or made by circumstance.

Did the genetic lottery

deal me these cards,

or do I have free will

and moral agency

so that my fate is mine to own?

And even if I could somehow bootstrap myself

into whom I'd rather be,

have I left it too late?

One life to live.

But so much to regret,

too many mistakes.