The final book in one of my classes was Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. It is a memoir of relationships, homelessness, alcoholism, and life. It’s a very well-written, interesting book. It’s not a classic memoir in that it is told completely from Flynn’s point of view.

This book has made me think about a lot of things in my life.

I haven’t always had a good relationship with my parents. I do feel a distance between us and there have been long stretches where I haven’t even heard from them nor did I pick up the phone to talk to them even though we live less than five miles from one another. There is a time when distancing oneself from relationships is healthy. For me, it’s good to play things at a distance or I will be hurt more than I need to be.

That’s not the topic that was the most poignant for me, though.

When I was in kindergarten, we moved from San Diego to Missoula, Montana. We arrived in Montana with little more than the shirts on our backs. We lived out of a Metro van in a KOA campsite for a while (I can’t tell you how long it was because I can’t remember but I do know it was a few months).

My dad had built a bunkbed system into the van so that we could put elevated cots into this locking system and take them out each day. I don’t remember struggling then. It seemed more like fun for me.

But we were homeless.

Later, a few years down the road, we had a home – barely. One Christmas, I can remember that the only gift we got was from my grandparents. It was a gift certificate to Albertson’s so that we could have some food to eat. We were so poor that we didn’t have food and the only way to eat was to receive charity from others.

Fast forward another few years. We’re still in Montana. We lost our home. We lived in a loft my dad built above the office at his business. The smells of oil, gas, and urethane remind me of those days.

Some of you have been reading for years and know my story of taking a bath in a garbage can…because that was the only thing we had to take a bath in.

I have lived in motor home, in the back of a car, and in tents.

I have been a member of those invisible masses that people pretend they don’t see when they walk down the streets. I’ve been one of those dirty kids in hand-me-downs whose belly growled with hunger. I’ve been one of those kids who clung to anything that would remind me of normalcy. Usually it was books. Sometimes it was music (this became much easier when cassette tapes came out and they were much more portable than albums).

So why am I bringing all of this up? I’ve been thinking about identity a lot lately. How do we define ourselves? How has life defined us?

I have, for most of my life, felt like an interloper into a world that was not my own. I have often felt invisible in groups of people. I’m not as dynamic. I’m not as sure of myself. I’m that white trash kid who is pretending to fit into society.

I latched on to education. It was a place where I could excel. While other kids made fun of my clothes, my pronunciation of words, or my need to be on subsidized lunches, I excelled in reading. I excelled in language. I was good in science.

I journeyed toward that bright light of education. I could hear the angels and harps singing its praises, beckoning me forth, promising me the promised land, the land of the middle and upper classes. I entered the sanctioned playground of the wealthy white elite.

Through it all, I’ve felt different. It took me 20 years to get my bachelor’s degree. My parents didn’t pay my way. I had to work full-time in order to go to school. Sometimes I had to take a break from school to make money to be able to live.

But I made it.

I own a home. I have a great job. I am working on my master’s degree (something my brother reminds me that less than 1% of all people in the world are or have achieved).

And yet, I still feel like the outsider, the interloper. I don’t think I see things the same way as my fellow students and the pang of that difference is a steady beat for me.

I don’t necessarily think this is always a bad thing. I often consider that I may give others a different perspective. I also think that it gives me a different way of looking at things for my research. However, it has also caused problems. You cannot force people to understand what it is like to be marginalized if they have never been there. They may be incredibly empathetic but they will never know what it’s like to be there and so, cannot understand what that feels like.

I think, sometimes, this is why I try so hard to fit in. I want to be a part of that “in-crowd.” I want to be seen as a valid and valuable part of a community.

I don’t want to be invisible.

And sometimes I still feel like I am.