I have never really felt I fitted in. On a good day I am in the same play as everyone else but am on a different page, so I find it hard to follow what is happening. On a low day I am in a different play to everyone else so it is very confusing. On a very bad day, I don't have a script all, and watch everyone else read from their scripts as I feel very isolated.

Being different isn't always a difficult thing. I like being different at times and being a bit of a rebel. However I do have that innate human need to want to feel part of a group.

When I read Ruth's comment to Ratg's blog about this being the first time in her life she had felt she truly belonged to a community, it touched me as I knew that yearning.

As humans we want to feel like we belong somewhere, a soft place to land, a place where we are truly accepted for who we are. A place where we don't have to change to belong, where we're liked for just they we are.

Especially if we are having a low day, coming to terms with a mental heath diagnosis, facing, grief, dealing with our own illness or that of loved ones, it is important we have somewhere to go where we are understood, where we are welcomed .

Often you are faced with loved ones, friends, health workers, strangers, neighbours who say unhelpful even hurtful things that make us feel even worse when what we really need is a hug and someone to hold our hands and tell us everything will be alright.

The place I find where I belong is a bookshop, the older the better. As soon as I enter and smell the leather bindings, the dust, the old books and I breathe in all that knowledge and literary wisdom, I feel I am home and I belong.

What makes you feel you belong? Is there a special place, your happy place, that you can go to when you need a lift. What makes it so special?

Leah

A Moodscope member.