Issue 11 – The Fitting In Era
(Spoiler: It Doesn't Fit)
I couldn’t help but wonder…
When did fitting in become the hardest role to play?
Growing up, I learned quickly that the goal was to blend in. To sand down the edges, straighten the wrist, lower the pitch, and hope that nobody noticed the parts of me that didn’t match the template. It was like performing a script I never auditioned for, desperately trying to get the lines right while everyone else seemed to ad-lib with ease.
It’s exhausting, playing a version of yourself that isn’t you. Trying to be more “masc,” less “obvious,” more palatable. Making jokes you don’t believe in. Laughing too hard at things that aren’t funny. Pretending you’ve seen the latest match highlights when you couldn’t care less. It’s not acting — it’s erasure.
And yet, so many of us have done it. Maybe we still do. Because the alternative — being unapologetically, visibly ourselves — has always felt riskier. Safer to shrink, to slip into the background, than risk the spotlight and its consequences.
But here’s the thing: fitting in doesn’t always mean belonging. Sometimes it’s the opposite. You end up surrounded by people who don’t know you at all, laughing at jokes that aren’t yours, living a life that doesn’t fit. Like squeezing into a pair of jeans two sizes too small and insisting they’re comfortable.
And the city? It doesn’t make it easier. Here, identity feels like a dress code. You’re expected to arrive in the right uniform — cool but casual, witty but effortless, masc but not toxic, queer but not “too much.” Step out of line, and you risk not being invited in. Or worse: being noticed.
But the truth is, the moments I’ve felt most like myself have been the ones where I stopped trying to fit and simply existed. Where the laugh was real. Where the walk was mine. Where the friends around me didn’t need me to be anything other than exactly what I was.
Maybe that’s the plot twist: fitting in doesn’t fit. Not really. And forcing it only means losing the very thing that makes us worth knowing in the first place.
So no — I don’t fit in. But maybe I was never supposed to. Maybe none of us were.
And if the choice is between squeezing myself smaller or living at full volume, then I choose the noise. The colour. The freedom. The me.
Read Issue 12: Twenty-Nine and Counting (The Birthday Buffer Zone)