I don’t need to be the same to fit in—I can be different, me, and still fit in—because I am not one thing.
The idea of fitting in gives us the impression that we need to fit between others; squeezed and perfect, like a puzzle piece. But people are not hard, four-cornered pieces of cardboard. We are malleable, and we have tons of protrusions and indentations that are supposed to help us fit together, not between other people. When people picture themselves as puzzle pieces, they actually reduce themselves to repeated jigsaw cuts. I believe expanding the self and making yourself bigger actually helps you fit with others better.
Growing yourself gives you a bigger surface area and variation of nooks and grooves and therefore a better chance of finding a spot in you that matches someone else. The more developed those shapes are, the better. Most people don’t mind rough edges, but it’s a lot easier and more comfortable to interact without the friction of underdevelopment.
My overall shape might be the biggest, funkiest puzzle piece you’ve ever seen; but if you look closely, my perimeter is cut out into recognizable shapes. My music side can connect with the common lip of pop, the hard point of EDM, and the extra-special swirl of indie horror game soundtracks. I might not find a piece that fits there very often, but it’s so exciting when I do. Not every part of me has to be especially feasible or probably to connect with. When I have those special shapes, it makes me feel unique, and it makes it that much more exciting when I find someone who matches me there.
Not everyone will meet and match every side of me, and not everyone will even see every side of me. A perfectly circular piece might feel threatened by sharp points, and a triangle might be confused by a circle. Despite that, a triangle can still roll along a circle for just a moment. There’s nothing holding them together, but that doesn’t mean they have no way to connect in a point of contact.
Grow yourself. Connect with things you wouldn’t normally connect with. If you enjoy it, it’ll grow your circumference and shape itself into your perimeter, and allow you to feel more unique, and therefore yourself. Uni in unique is not one way, it’s one shape. It means being so many things, you become the one piece who looks exactly that way. We fit better together when we fit in many ways.