I feel your pain. My son is 13. Since he entered his teen years he has expressed more sadness about being an outsider in our small agricultural, football-obsessed town. It doesn't help that he has to wear a scoliosis brace that makes it impossible for him to participate in fun activities with other kids his age. He has been is in musical theater since age 4 but could not go to the last two cast parties because of the brace which is painful in addition to making him walk like a robot. He can't even stay the entire rehearsal. When he is there he can't really talk to anyone because he has to focus on learning his dances which is hard when he has to sit and watch part of the time because of the pain. Pain can make depression worse so there are days when we take mental health days. It is really hard when he asks me if there is really any light at the end of this tunnel and when he will be able to live a normal life and I have no answers. I can only be there for him as he goes through this. For a while we had fast enough internet so that he could play online multiplayer games and that helped but our internet keeps disconnecting and is very slow because of some problem with the towers that the company will not fix. To him it feels like things are only getting worse instead of better.
But through all his pain he noticed that others are also in pain and had very difficult lives, more difficult than his. He read a lot of the "we are the 99% letters." He has become very concerned about our government and we recently took him to his first political rally. He was surrounded by a lot of young adults talking about the issues he had been telling us about. He was so energized that he was able take the foot pain and back pain from standing longer than he is normally able to. He loved it. He felt so good about persuading his dad, who didn't like this political candidate, to go with us to listen and see what he was really saying instead of what the biased news media was reporting. He felt good when his dad said he liked a lot of what the candidate was saying. He also like that his dad talked to young man standing next to him that sounded like an older version of my son because he was very articulate, very passionate about his beliefs. This very attractive, intelligent young guy was from a small town, didn't do sports, didn't fit in, but he went to college and had just paid off his student loans. I liked this guy. When my husband mentioned that we homeschooled he told us that he thought it was good that we were homeschooling and that it was obvious that we cared. He said most of his teachers in school seemed like they didn't care and he had to learn on his own outside of school. This young guy might not have had a lot of friends in school because he didn't do sports but he is now doing very well because he focused on working and learning. I think my son will do the same. He can't do social things right now but he is probably reading and learning more than he would have if he were able to get out and do things.
I have always told my son that he would fit in when he goes to college but it seems like such a long time to him. He said a few weeks ago that he doesn't think he can stand living like this for so long, so I am also looking for ways to help my son feel like he belongs. I don't think a therapist would help my son and he doesn't want to go to another doctor--he sees enough of those already.
