What would belonging feel like?

 Over at Tesseract she describes how her group therapy sessions go.  She feels disconnected from the group.  One of the people commenting posed this question...

What would belonging feel like?

The question really caught my attention.   Isolation is a word I understand. In a crowd, when I dissociate, I am isolated like being inside a bubble that no one else can see.  I thought when I integrated this would stop happening.  All integration did was make me more acutely aware of how isolated I feel, because I was alone in my head now too.  I remember as a teenager going to parties and feeling like I was there but I wasn't all at the same time.  One of my parts loved parties the others didn't.  So Maria, my party girl, loved the noise, the ebb and flow of conversation, the flirting, everything and anything social.  She integrated into me and I can still enjoy a party but I haven't mastered her ability to fit into the crowd scene.  I much prefer a small group.  When I consider the question, "What would belonging feel like?" I can honestly say I am not sure at first.  As a child my place in the family was caretaker and peacemaker.  Which were psuedo-names for put up with whatever bull shit is dished out and don't you dare complain.  So if you don't feel like you belong in your own family how do you fit in somewhere else?  When I raised my children I had the role of mother.  I know what I wanted to do in that role but take me outside of that and I am not sure what to do.  At work where I was laid off, they didn't consider me a 'team' player.  I did my own thing and hoped they would leave me alone as much as possible.  Didn't work.  When I went back to college in my 40's I was old enough to be some of the students mother. In fact, I did end up in class with one of my daughter-in-laws.  (That was very fun.)  I think the miracle I felt about working in the computer labs with the professors is I found a nitch I fit in.  The students and professors counted on my being there and helping.  The appreciated my efforts and I felt like in the small place I belonged.  Change of bosses and all that changed because the new boss did NOT want me helping students in the computer labs.  I was to only fix the computers.  My theory was if all the computers work and the students don't understand what they need to do, they computers are useless.  I was good at helping students with Photoshop.  I was moved to music.  The first problem I encountered was a sound problem.  I wear hearing aides.  I couldn't fix the problem that I couldn't hear.  I was sharply aware of going from feeling like I belonged and made a difference to feeling like I was useless and didn't matter if I was there or not.  I am thinking belonging is how I feel as a mother and in the photoshop lab.  I belong because I fit in and feel like I am important to being there.  I like the feeling of belonging.  I feel happiest when I am involved with those that appreciate me and my unique set of abilities.  I feel like it has a large dose of acceptance.  It was really awesome the other day when I apologized to one of my kids for not being able to watch a movie because of content.  He reassured me that I did not need to ever apologize to him because something over whelmed me.  The feeling of acceptance was awesome.  I won't always belong in a group but that is ok because I do belong somewhere.