Socially, what is socially acceptable?  Apparently I’m not.  They talk to me only when they feel there is a need to, but otherwise they don’t.  The dark clouds walk with me casting its shadows, so they think.  A weirdo.  An outsider.  An outcast.  Not normal for their circle of friends.  Not part of the black community and not part of the white community.  Not part of any community in their eyes.

I didn’t know that the world was divided in such a way.  Communities based on color, religion, ideology.  A society who’s laws state differences were accepted, it’s far from the truth.  I sat at a lunch table skimming through my tablet looking for something interesting to watch.  I could feel their eyes on me, staring, wondering about me.  Do they approach me?  Do they pretend I’m not there?  Do they just be?

I could hear it in my mind as if they were posing these questions to me.  I then answer them in my mind, just be yourself.

Do you think they can just be themselves?  Maybe that shouldn’t have been my answer.  Who knows what kind of self they can truly be?  Are they evil?  Are they mean?  And why would they want to alienate me?

The news was flooded with killings about differences.  A shooting over race, over religion; leaving the victims to suffer and to learn to hate.  It’s a domino effect.  Hate teaching others to hate.  The hater or the assailant always having a valid reason for the harm they casted.

It’s their belief, their religion that identified me as an evil person and granted them the right to do harm to me.  All I did was sit at my lunch table to eat lunch.  But I looked different and I didn’t believe in their religion or subscribed to any, as an agnostic.  Their religion that spent countless hours of recruiting more to wage war on others who they could not recruit.

I slowly ate my sandwich as I watched a 30 minute show.  There was no reason to make them uncomfortable, in the silence they created when around me or the hateful joking remarks showing that they didn’t want to deal with me.  It was okay for others to do the same thing I did, but when I did it; they responded negatively.  I wasn’t to speak, to give my opinion.  I wasn’t to ask for anything.  I wasn’t to do my work well and above anyone else.  I was expected to be unkept, not educated, not well spoken, and not sociable; because of course I was not part of the norm in their society.

Yet, I have to question their society.  For one, it doesn’t belong to them.  It was them that didn’t originate from here.  Two, they built the society based on outsiders, who were once outcasted and unaccepted.  And three, their society is incorrect; filled with conflicts and ever growing special interest groups fighting one another.

After eating my lunch, I cleaned up my mess and walked out of the lunchroom back to my desk.  As I left the lunchroom, they became comfortable and began speaking much more frequently with ease and conviction.  They were free from my presence.

They created a society of hate and alienation.  They say they have aliens amongst them.