Sunday, October 10, 2004 at 3:54PM
by C.E. Dorsett
The word Outcast rang through my mind today in a way that few words ever do. I decided to look it up. The Encarta Pocket Dictionary says:
outcast n
somebody excluded by others
Yep, that's me. No wonder the word drifted in behind my eyes. I have been looking for a way to define myself, a way to see myself that wasn't corrosive to my being. When I was in high school, (an unbelievable 9 years ago), my friends and I called ourselves Freaks. It was powerful. It gave us an almost tribal identity to hold on to as the petty cliquish world of high school melodrama did its best to destroy anyone who did not conform.
I had hoped that things would change after graduation, but I have found the “adult world” to have more entrenched cliques than High School. Nothing changed, if anything, it got worse.
I never liked the word freak, it implied that something was wrong with me... a lie that was all too easy to swallow.
I like outcast though. It implies no flaw on my part, yet describes the state I continue to find myself in perfectly. Perhaps I should switch... trade up as it were.
To be an outcast rather than a freak, to turn the eye of suspicion from myself to the other. What moral flaw must a person have to accept me as I am? I am not repulsive, ghastly, or uncouth? Yes, yes, I have found a better word to describe my state.
I am an outcast!