Belonging, at What Cost

All my life, I looked up to my sister, who had a mixture of friends that she’d take me to their every meeting since I was six.
I grew up wanting exactly the same.

Soon after, I ended up facing the biggest disappointment that threw me into a deep pit.
I cried myself to sleep on the first day of school.

Not because of anything concrete, but because I’m a master of jumping to conclusions.

Almost all the kids knew each other from their prior school. Groups were already formed. The cool kids, the nerds, the common people, and the nobodies.

There weren’t any classes on the first day. We were all expected to take an English test, then be placed accordingly.

Betrayed by my linguistic skills, my score placed me in the same class as the nerd kids.

I grew up watching American teen series. While it may sound shallow, I have to admit I dreamt of being part of the cool kids.

That was one of my promises to the little girl within.

She was going to be popular. She was going to experience having a high school lover when she was a sophomore and he was a senior, just like her sister. She was going to diet and look like Elena Gilbert because her sister told her being skinny was the most important thing.

I owed this to her.

I started making checklists each night before school.
✓ Talk to Sami for five minutes
✓ Eat your lunch at the cool kids’ spot
✓ Sit next to Lacin on the bus

That didn’t really get me anywhere.

Still, I was invited to the cool kids’ party at the end of the year.

I got super drunk, rolling over grass, almost drowning in the shower, shouting at the boy I liked countless times, and waking up with bruises and scars all over my body.

Summer followed, and I spent it entirely worrying on my reputation, which could very well have been non-existent at that point.

While the next year didn’t start off as badly as I thought, not long after I found myself in the middle of a stormy depression.

I just didn’t feel like I belonged.

At the time, I didn’t know belonging was something I already had simply by being human.
Not by performance, but by nature.

Erich Fromm says most people don’t belong. They conform to avoid feeling alone.

He asks, “Belonging, but at what cost?”

According to him, once humans became self-aware, we also became aware of something uncomfortable: we are separate. That invited the observer into the room. It wasn’t just ourselves we were aware of, but each other’s presence.

Every individual is unique and unrepeatable.

Yet instead of honouring that through cherishing our differences, we adapt ourselves to fit the group by softening our opinions, hiding parts of ourselves, until the edges of our authenticity are shaved down to become “acceptable.”

Not because anyone prefers to be fake, but because it feels safer to belong falsely than to stand alone truthfully.

Almost without noticing, you become like everyone else.

A few days ago, I watched Jojo Rabbit, about an adorable seven year old man-child who grew up in Germany, brainwashed with Nazism, believing Jews are dangerous, strange, almost supernatural.

He doesn’t believe it because he is hateful by nature.
He believes it because he is a child who wants to belong.

Just like the rest of us.

A child in a fractured world, trying to find where he fits.

Growing up, he isn’t only given something to believe. He is given a place. Told who he is, where he stands, and who he stands with, removing the uncertainty of being an individual by absorbing him into something larger.

Most of us live our lives based on expectations set by family or by ourselves from day one. We build these so-called identities and determine our paths accordingly. Yet we look away from something huge.

Change can happen anytime.

Sometimes I stop and realise how many different versions of myself I’ve had to become just to keep going.

Eventually, I realised we’re not made of a single self. We’re made of layers. People carry fragments, faces, roles.

Back then in high school, one day a phone call with my sister changed the entire trajectory of the rest of my years.

I was telling her how much I wanted the “it girl” to like me.

What she asked in return was:

“How much do you like her?”

It was as if a button I didn’t know was there clicked in me.

I didn’t hate her. But I didn’t like her either. Not at all.

Why did I want to be liked by someone I didn’t like myself?

For Jojo, being part of the Nazi youth wasn’t just fitting in. It was safety, identity, structure.
A way to feel important in a chaotic world.

By wearing the uniform, repeating the language, performing enthusiasm, and through that performance, Jojo experiences identity, feels seen, recognised, included.

According to Fromm, this is a fragile kind of belonging because it depends on maintaining the performance, pressuring him to remain aligned with the group, even if something within him begins to shift.

Then one day, he hears a sudden cracking sound coming from the attic. He traces it to a hidden space, finding a girl at the end of it.

Jojo runs for his life, thinking she is a ghost.

But she is worse for Jojo.

She is a Jew.

Up until then, Jojo has been taught that Jews have horns, that they can read minds, sleep upside down like bats, and are somehow less human and yet strangely more powerful at the same time.

Before we meet a person as they are, we have already dressed them in the fabric of our memories, emotions, and beliefs. Our interpretation is coloured by our inner world, especially the parts we keep in shadow.

We can drape them in admiration or wrap them in suspicion, but either way, we are never seeing the person exactly as they are. We are seeing a blend of them and us.

Elsa does not confront Jojo with arguments. She confronts him with presence.

Her existence disrupts the system he has internalised, not through logic but through experience.

In the following days, my sister’s question stayed with me. I started doing my own thing, not minding others’ opinions, and then all of a sudden, it happened.

I became popular when I stopped trying.

To let go of ideology is not just to change our mind.
It is to risk losing the structure that holds us, the identity that defines us, the sense of being part of something.

And when we don’t, existential anxiety kicks in. The subtle knowing that nothing is holding you in place unless you choose it.

This is the paradox we spend our lives resisting.

Answers do not save us, they shrink us.

They flatten the wild, living pages into a single line, escaping freedom by conforming to avoid isolation.

The real conflict, according to Fromm, is not simply between truth and falsehood. It is between belonging and authenticity.

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