Too alien for Earth. Too human for outer space.

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… In this world, but not of it. My entire life I feel like I've been going through the motions. I've had to be pushed to get jobs and go to school. There is nothing that this world offers that I want, (aside from maybe a few cats ). People stress and strain their lives away to attain status and material things, to make themselves or others proud, and I've never understood this. I love people, but I don't feel a need to be around them. I greatly appreciate the beautiful things of this world, but I don't want any of it for myself. I honestly would be perfectly content living the life of a monk. All I want is to live in peace and quiet, to just be, without having to pretend. I've never felt like I belong here on this Earth, but somewhere else, and have been drawn to spirituality and books, shows and movies with otherworldly places and characters since I was a child. As a child I often heard my mom say, "Earth to Blair!", "What planet were you on?", and I was seen as a "space cadet". This feeling of being different and homesickness can be overwhelming sometimes. It's hard to live in this world when it's as if you have one foot in and one foot out. Can anyone else relate?

Probably most people here

I feel like you can relate to most here.

After all, this is the Wrong Planet.

Welcome.

"After all, this is the Wrong Planet."< This is true.

Thank you.

I feel exactly the same way. I've never met anybody I liked - on any deep level - outside of my family, and if I'm brutally honest, even that only out of a sense of duty. I think almost everybody alive is just so shallow, pretentious, so lacking in any individuality that I'll use almost any excuse to avoid them.

Dogs, on the other hand, I could spend every waking moment with.

Welcome.

You've come to the right place. Yes, I and many others here feel exactly how you do.

I believed as a child that I actually was from a different planet, it's the only explanation that made sense to me as to why I was so different from others and what others thought. I believed my parents were just surrogates.

"In this world but not of this world." That's actually a tenet of Catholicism.

Van Morrison describes that same notion beautifully in the song Astral Weeks as well.

I actually have met, know people that I like on a deep level, but they are few and far between. It's rare because most people don't allow for themselves to be truly known.

"I think almost everybody alive is just so shallow, pretentious, so lacking in any individuality that I'll use almost any excuse to avoid them."< I can't stand idle chit chat and gossip and that's all that most people want to talk about, and for me to listen. It's exhausting. This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Charles Bukowski: “Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.”


To expand on that, I think what it comes down to is that the majority of people have developed insecurities since childhood and feel threatened to be their most authentic selves around others for fear of judgement, so they wear masks and play roles. I find it so odd... people pretending to be who, what they think will get them approval from a society of others who aren't even qualified in the matter as they are doing the same thing. If people would just let their mind-made selves fall away and truly see and understand one another, there wouldn't be any need for fear, dishonesty and conflict.

Given some have adopted a shallow, pretentious, lacking in individuality way of being because that is the culture that we live in manufactured by the media and the consumerist society that we live in.

"Dogs, on the other hand, I could spend every waking moment with."< Yes! For me, it's cats. I love dogs too and am always enthusiastic to meet every one that crosses my path, and I have one of my own.

Thank you.

What age were you when you came to believe that, and why? What was it about you that made you come to the understanding that you were different from others?
I don't think that I believed that I was from a different planet as a child, (maybe, as I always appeared to be on another one lol), but I did think that the "paperwork" must have gotten mixed up for me to incarnate on this planet because I have never fit in, nor understood what I am supposed to be doing here (like when you wake from a heavy sleep and look around the room, not understanding your surroundings momentarily- that's how I feel). I was born over three months premature, weighing just over a pound, and at one point, my parents were told that I wasn't going to make it. And so, I thought that it was a mistake that I survived.


Jesus said something to the effect of being in this world, but not of it. That he is from above, and humans from below.


I checked out the lyrics and they are beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I've always liked Van Morrison.

I don't recall the exact age but it was around 9. Third grade? I also don't recall the specific reason/s why. I was picked on a lot as a kid, was extremely clumsy, "pigeon toed" as the kids used to say when they'd laugh and imitate my gait or try to trip me. I was always considered "weird" as a kid in grade school. I just thought that I must not have been of this world since I was so alien compared to the other kids around me. I had a name for the planet I was from and a whole story about how I was created by the supreme leader of that planet, formed from his vomit, which on that planet was not seen as gross. He gave me a name in the language from that planet and I insisted that my classmates call me by that name rather than my given name. My classmates complied and for the last 2-3 years of my schooling there I was known by my alien name. I preferred it.

I believed that my "earth parents" loved me like any kid would expect that any parent would. However, I looked at it like they were obligated to. But part of it was that I just believed from a very early age that I was on my own and had to ultimately look out for myself if for some reason my parents didn't.

That early conviction came from my parents dropping me off with some neighbors that I barely knew when I was about 2 years old for about two weeks while they went on a cruise. I of course had no concept of what a cruise was or that they would be back to get me. I remember sitting on the floor of the neighbor's living room with her looking down at me and not saying anything. I thought that she and her husband were my new Mom and Dad? It could be part of why I had little to no desire to share my feelings, frustrations, fears, etc with my "earth parents". My world was very much an interior world inside my head. There was a lot of chaos around me and in my household growing up that was hard for me to process.

I'm glad you like Astral Weeks. There are some of us here who regard music as our lifeblood and couldn't imagine life without it.

Well, conformity is something conditioned into the nature of the higher mammals. In a sense, universal individuality would be a disaster. It isn't so much lack of individuality that's the problem, but that the collective instinct in mass man, who has to have, as a biological imperative, such an instinct, when combined with the modern advertising industry, can lead to moral disaster - and has done.

I tend to think the collectivity of past aeons was more benign, as it manifested itself in restrained, moral terms - religion was the great outlet for the mass mind and its value system, and religion, for all its faults, had some moral value.

With the death of any morally restraining outlet for man's collectivity, however, along with the rise of a capitalist class armed with the methods of advertising, we are in the situation where people's collective tendencies and desperation for some sort of substitute for the social cohesion religion once provided causes a kind of paradoxical war of all against all.

For me, it was always "He's in his own little world."

My supervisor at work describes it as being "in the zone".

The whole album is great. I actually have Moondance in my car stereo right now, and I'll probably pop it out soon and replace it with Street Choir (the only two CDs I own of his, I need to get more).

"Earth to cberg" was pretty much the most condescending bs I ever heard from my parents. I hope they learn.

I'm sorry that you were picked on a lot as a kid- I was, too, specifically from Kindergarten up until third or fourth grade. I still get picked on, but apparently it is well meant. Your story about your home planet is fascinating. What was your name? Interesting that you say that you were formed by the leaders vomit, as the bible states that humans were breathed into being.

I don't recall how I viewed my parents. My world was and still is very much within me.

Music was my lifeblood especially during my high school years- I don't how I would have survived without it. I still love it, listen to it throughout the day, but now spirituality and podcasts help me get through.

Well said!

I still get the "she's I her own little world". When I'm at work or on a writing spree, I call it being "in the zone". Do you find that you have two different settings? What I mean is I'm either spaced out (with that foggy-headed feeling), or hyper focused, "in the zone".

Right? I heard it ALL THE TIME as a child, from my mom, sigh of frustration and eye roll included. As far as them learning, I wouldn't hold your breath, haha. Mine haven't, at least.

Looking at old home videos, reflecting back on my childhood their flat out ignorance and neglect towards me is so apparent it's sad... it makes me sick. I'm currently in school working on getting my certificate in early childhood education with an emphasis on special needs, so that I can help parents understand their children on the spectrum and give both them and their children the tools to succeed. I don't want children like me to slip under the radar and have to go it alone like I did.