I Don’t Fit — And I’m Tired of Pretending That I Should:
I Don’t Fit — And I’m Tired of Pretending That I Should
There’s a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from a single bad day, or even a bad week. It comes from years of accumulation, from layers of experiences that never quite resolve, from constantly having to brace yourself before anything has even happened. It sits in the body, in the nervous system, in the quiet moments where you realise you are already tired before the day has even begun. And that is where I am. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and deeply, fundamentally exhausted.
Because the truth is, I don’t fit. Not neatly, not comfortably, not in the way the world seems to expect people to. I don’t fit into the boxes that are presented as “normal”, and I don’t fit into spaces that claim to be inclusive until you exist in a way that challenges them. There is always a line, an invisible one, where acceptance quietly turns into discomfort, where support turns into silence, and where difference becomes something people would rather not engage with.
As a neurodivergent person, I experience the world differently. I don’t always process things in real time. Sometimes it takes hours, sometimes days, to fully understand what I felt, what happened, or why something affected me the way it did. By the time I’ve made sense of it, the moment has passed for everyone else, but I am still there, sitting in it, trying to untangle it. And so I withdraw, not because I don’t care, but because I care in a way that is all-consuming, in a way that requires space and quiet and time that the world doesn’t seem willing to allow.
That withdrawal is often misunderstood. It’s labelled as distance, as disengagement, as something negative. But for me, it is survival. It is the only way to regulate in a world that rarely pauses long enough to understand how overwhelming it can be to exist within it.
People talk about support as though it is readily available, as though reaching out guarantees you will be held, heard, or helped. But that hasn’t been my reality. The reality has been being passed from place to place, being minimised, being told to cope, to manage, to keep going, without ever truly being given the tools or support to do so. Mental health services, when you need them most, can feel like closed doors you’re expected to keep knocking on without ever being let in.
All of this exists alongside chronic pain, the kind that doesn’t take a day off, the kind that doesn’t care what else is happening in your life. There is no pause, no moment where you can step outside of your own body and rest from it. And yet, life continues to demand that you function, that you perform, that you keep up. So you do. You push through. You show up. You meet responsibilities, even when your body is screaming for you to stop. And you do it quietly, because the world has taught you that pain is something to endure, not something that will be accommodated.
But the weight doesn’t stop there. It rarely does. There have been false allegations, lies that take on a life of their own, narratives constructed by others that bear no resemblance to the truth but somehow become louder than it. There has been harassment that doesn’t come as a single event, but as a pattern, something ongoing, something that chips away at your sense of safety. There has been intimidation, subtle and overt, from people who live close enough that you cannot simply escape it. Neighbours who should represent familiarity or community instead become a source of stress, of vigilance, of unease.
Living in that kind of environment changes you. It makes you hyper-aware, always scanning, always anticipating. It means your home, the place that should feel safest, doesn’t always feel like a refuge. And trying to explain that, trying to be believed, trying to have your experiences taken seriously, becomes another layer of exhaustion in itself.
From the outside, none of this is visible. People see moments, fragments, a post here, an image there, and they assume that because you are still standing, you must be okay. They don’t see what it takes to remain standing. They don’t see the mental replaying of events long after they’ve passed, the internal processing, the emotional labour of making sense of things that were never fair to begin with. They don’t see the fear that lingers when safety has been compromised, or the strength it takes to continue existing in a space that has repeatedly made you feel unwelcome.
And so, over time, I stopped trying to fit. I stopped trying to force myself into spaces that required me to shrink, to dilute, or to perform a version of myself that was more acceptable. I stopped trying to belong in systems that were never designed with people like me in mind. Instead, I became a hermit, not out of defeat, but out of necessity. Out of self-preservation. Because when the outside world feels hostile, unpredictable, and exhausting, retreat becomes a form of protection. Solitude becomes a space where you can finally exhale.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t loneliness. It doesn’t mean there isn’t grief for the connection that should exist but often doesn’t. But it does mean there is peace, or at least moments of it, and those moments matter.
Not fitting is not a failure. It is not something that needs to be fixed. It is an awareness, a recognition that sometimes the issue is not the individual, but the environments and systems that refuse to adapt, that refuse to include, that expect conformity rather than understanding.
As a disability advocate, I stand for inclusion, for accessibility, for the right of people to exist as they are without being diminished or erased. But I do not believe that advocating for one group should come at the expense of another. There is room for all of us. There has to be. Because the alternative is a constant fight over space, over legitimacy, over who is allowed to exist comfortably, and that is not a world that benefits anyone.
Despite everything, I am still here. Through the lies, the harassment, the constant need to defend my own reality, I am still here. Through the chronic pain, the exhaustion, the isolation, I am still here. Not because it has been easy, but because something in me refuses to disappear simply because the world has made it difficult to exist.
I may not fit into this world in the way it expects, but that does not mean I do not belong in it. It does not mean my existence is wrong, or too much, or inconvenient. It simply means that the spaces I have been placed in were never built with me in mind.
And I am no longer willing to shrink myself to make that more comfortable for others.
If I do not fit your box, then perhaps your box was never meant to hold me.
And that is not something I need to apologise for.
Sarah Wingfield ❤️
KawaiiDollDecora.uk
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Alt text:
Hand-drawn-style four-panel comic on a pastel pink patterned background with black border details and drippy doodle accents in the corners. The top left panel shows a sad purple-toned girl with long white hair sitting curled up beneath blossom-like details, with the caption “I wish people understood me better.” The top right panel shows a glowing neon pink figure sitting alone in a dark forest-like setting, captioned “Or at least made an effort to try to.” Across the middle is the text “KawaiiDollDecora.uk.” The large bottom panel is split diagonally: the left side is filled with chaotic black scribbles over part of a purple face and the caption “I don’t understand the need to hate,” with the word “hate” emphasised in bright pink; the right side shows a vivid glowing pink moon in a starry purple sky. At the bottom right, the final caption reads, “So I isolate.”
