Women who don’t belong

I’ve never really belonged. 

Not to a place, not to a person, not to an idea of who I should be. Sometimes it ached like an unclaimed ghost inside me. Other times, it thrilled me. Like the secret knowledge that no one could ever truly pin me down.

Lang Leav calls her a wandering star. Lana Del Rey calls her a girl with a chameleon soul. Nikita Gill calls her Red Riding Hood who knew exactly what she was doing when she invited the wild in.

Maybe we’re the same girl or at least, kindred sparks.

I used to wonder if something was broken in me because I couldn’t root myself the way others did. I watched people build lives like houses, neat walls, same doors, familiar keys. Meanwhile, I was a door left swinging on its hinges, the wind howling through me, carrying me to the next somewhere I might half-belong.

I’ve belonged to lovers, briefly. I’ve belonged to jobs, communities, ideas of home. Each time, there’s a moment when my spirit slips the collar… quiet, cunning. It remembers: You were never made for fences.

Sometimes I want to stay, truly. There are arms that fit like a made thing, words that sound like home, nights that taste like forever. And still, some wildness inside me whispers: Don’t promise forever when your blood knows better.

Lana’s words land deep in my stomach: I was born to be the other woman, who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me.

God. Yes. Terrifying. Beautiful. Maddening. True.

They never tell us fairytales about girls like this. They warn us instead, don’t be too hungry, too slippery, too wild. Don’t ruin your nice edges with desire. Don’t run off the path. Don’t talk to wolves.

But some of us are made of wolf hunger. Some of us can’t help but taste the dark woods and lick our red lips clean. Some of us know exactly what we’re doing when we let the wild in.

So here I am.

A star that can’t be caught. A door swinging open. A girl who won’t stop wandering.

I belong to no one, to nothing, to nowhere. And maybe there’s holiness in that. Maybe my not-belonging is a devotion, a vow to keep the wild alive inside me, to keep saying yes to the vast, restless horizon.

Maybe if you meet me, you’ll feel it too, that tiny wild place in you that refuses the leash, that longs for the deep woods, that aches to stand at the edge of your own life and know: I am mine, and mine alone.