Misfit
How communities teach us to copy one version of success, and how people who aren’t built for that life slowly break trying to belong
In our community,
they show you one life
and call it the right one.
**
One path.
One definition of winning.
One shape everyone is expected to bend into.
**
They point at the ones who made it
and say,
“Follow them.”
**
So we try.
**
We dress like them.
Think like them.
Chase the same milestones
with bodies and minds
built for something else.
**
Some people grow doing that.
They were made for it.
The system opens for them.
The ground supports them.
**
The rest of us don’t rise.
**
We strain.
We stretch past our limits.
We silence instincts.
We ignore the pain
because pain is renamed “discipline.”
**
And slowly, quietly,
we start breaking.
**
Not in ways people notice.
In confidence.
In sleep.
In self-respect.
**
They don’t call it harm.
They call it “not trying hard enough.”
**
No one asks
why the same advice
produces success in one person
and fractures in another.
**
They never talk about design.
Only results.
**
So when we crack,
they don’t blame the blueprint.
**
They blame us.
**
But the truth is simple and ugly:
**
A wall breaks
when it’s forced to grow like a plant.
**
Not because it’s weak.
Because it was never meant
to live someone else’s life.
**
And the saddest part?
**
Most people don’t break chasing success.
They break chasing permission
to be accepted.
*******
Thank you everyone for giving me so much love and support on my previous piece Loved While Full. 💛 Your words and encouragement have filled me in ways I can’t fully express. I hope I was able to return a little of that by sharing my best work with you. Your appreciation truly means the world.
About the Creator
Aarsh Malik
Poet, Storyteller, and Healer.
Sharing self-help insights, fiction, and verse on Vocal.
Anaesthetist.
...
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Comments (5)
"They don't call it harm, they call it not trying enough" :( It's devastating because it's true. What a beautiful and honestly heartbreaking poem.
🐠 🌳 great work!
Yes! And I feel like the school system has been designed to start programming us and fitting us into these neat little boxes before we can even fathom what's happening. I loved your poem!
YES Thank you 💪⛹️♀️🏀🥇🏊♀️❤😆🎇🎇🎆🌌🌅⛩️⛩️⛩️⛩️ . . . . BLESSINGS! Power to you! 🛸🌆🌆😆😆😆 . . . . 🎇🎇🎆⛩️ . . ⛩️⛩️ . .
Beautifully-written & insightful!