Being the "Other"

The artifact that I had was a "get to know you" bingo but alas miscommunication happens and I no longer have it.  I loved the irony that was represented by that paper because it was supposed to show experiences that we have in common but I left that evening feeling the opposite.  However, BYU recently BYU published a picture that captured a little bit of what I encountered.  

  

For this experience, I went to an event in which I was the only person in the room who had not served a mission.  The group I ended up in was full of people who had served their missions in Europe-- two guys joined our group when theirs went home and they served elsewhere.  However, I have never served a mission and in Provo--especially right now-- this puts me in a culture of my own.  

Notes from this event:

-Oh look, I'm the only one raising my hand.  Everyone look at the weird girl.   Everything anyone ever said to me that was slighting in regards to my not serving a mission came flooding back into my brain.  

-It is so much easier to shut myself off from everyone and just sink into the background 

- People are always forgetting that I am not one of them and I keep having to remind them.  I'm actually really tempted to lie but I know that would backfire like crazy. 

-I do know a little bit about what they are talking about.  I'm not completely clueless.  I just have to remember the mission e-mails I've got from friends.  

-This makes it so much easier for me to just sit on the sidelines.  I've worked hard lately to be able to go outside my comfort zone and I have been making progress but I ended up just sitting on the sidelines because I didn't want to bring any more attention to myself.  

Being the other is really uncomfortable.  According to a recent article published by BYU, 63% of the current student enrollment is returned missionaries now and so I'm not unfamiliar with being a minority in most social events but this one was particularly painful.  I was so grateful when we left and I could blend back in.  I live with roommates who have not served a mission and we have all accepted that going on a mission was not what our Heavenly Father had in store for us.  I have gotten so that I judge people by how they react when I tell them I haven't served a mission.  At first it was perfectly fine.   This opportunity kind of dropped itself into my lap because when I went in, I was not aware that this was going to be an uncomfortable thing.  It was just an FHE at the house of a member of a member of the stake presidency.  However, at the very beginning of his talk, he asked how many people there had served a mission.  When he saw how many hands came up, he amended his question and asked "Who has not served a mission?"  My lone hand went up.  In that moment, I realized that I represented the "other" and so when the opportunity came to stay with them or to go home to my apartment and security, I elected to stay and continue to try to participate in the fun.  The group that ended up with was fun and I had enjoyed it so I thought that it wouldn't be that bad.  I was wrong.  All of the people int he group had come home within the last six months and so their way of relating to other people was through stories from their mission.  I tried to particpate with stories I had heard from others but that can only take me so far and when they started talking about the stores they went to and little things that I could not possibly relate to, I started to fade into the background.  I started having to force myself to participate in the smallest of things.  I tried to steer the conversation towards topics that we had in common but they were constantly forgetting that I didn't know about little things that reminded me that I did not belong.  I had to fish for stories that would allow me to speak their language.  What bothered me most about this experience was how much it affected how I viewed my ability to participate in anything.  I felt like an outsider and so it made it more difficult for me to be willing to make a fool of myself playing basketball or to show off how bad I am at ping pong.  It was the little things that they said that hurt the most and showed me just how much I am outside of my comfort zone.  It is important for me to know, as a teacher, just how debilitating this can be.  I need to be careful about my language and be careful about how I explain things to my students.  It is the little things that can trigger the feelings of being on the outside.  I also need to keep an eye out because I will slip up and I don't want them to sink into themselves or give up ever feeling like they will be part of the group because I know just how much that can affect.