Belonging to yourself means more than belonging to anyone else.
I remember going back to the house I grew up in, after my life had fallen apart, to spend time away from the mess I’d made of things. In those early conversations with my mother, about mistakes, about loving yourself, about feeling like an outsider, she said a few things that have stayed with me ever since.
She told me she had often felt like she didn’t fit in either. That she never had a big circle of friends. But she didn’t care, because she knew who she was, what she had to offer, and what she stood for.
At the time I thought, how lovely for her, and how sad for me. Because I was lost. I didn’t recognise who I’d become. And worst of all, I had spent so much of my life worrying about being liked that I had dimmed my own light just to make other people comfortable around me. I had made myself as palatable as possible to fit in. I knew, even then, that it had been a mistake.
* * *
We’re often taught that fitting in matters more than standing on our own. That a big circle of friends is better than a couple of people who genuinely love us. That if we learn to be more like everyone else, we’ll make fewer waves and find more places we belong.
But belong to what, exactly?
I had numbed myself for years. Dimmed my light. Played a role so I’d be liked by many on the surface, instead of being truly known and loved by the handful of people who actually understood who I was. And as the years passed, I came to a realisation. The happiest people I know don’t live in a room full of people who accept them for being beige. They thrive in a room with a few people who celebrate them for being colourful, vibrant, and unmistakably themselves.
As soon as that landed, things started to change.
* * *
I thought back to being a little boy, dancing like no one was watching, humming to my favourite songs, letting myself be completely free in the moment regardless of who was around or what they thought. Somewhere along the way I had stopped doing that. Stopped embracing my own joy. And somewhere in that stopping, I had become lost and miserable without fully understanding why.
So over the last decade I decided to chase that feeling back. To do what genuinely made me happy and see how far I could take it. It started small. Humming when I was out in public. Wearing what I actually wanted to wear, even when I suspected other people wouldn’t love it.
And then one day I was dancing around my apartment, completely lost in a song, and a strange thought crossed my mind. Why not record this?
* * *
So I put on a great song, set up my camera, danced around my place like I would have if no one was watching, and posted it to TikTok.
I was mortified almost immediately. What had I done? What would people say? Would they make fun of me? But the entire point of what I was trying to build in myself was to do what I wanted without caring what other people thought. So I left it up.
I don’t know exactly why that video took off the way it did. Maybe it was a 30-something man clearly having too much fun. Maybe it was something else entirely. But it blew up, and somewhere in the response, I think something resonated with a lot of other people that had nothing to do with my dancing, which remains questionable at best.
I had spent my whole life being told I was too feminine, too free, not masculine enough, too much. And here was a video of me being exactly that, completely unbothered, and people weren’t recoiling from it. They were drawn to it.
It was never really about me. It was about other people watching someone who clearly didn’t care, who was loving the moment, who had let himself be free of every rule and restriction he’d absorbed over a lifetime.
So I posted another one the next day. And then several a week, for two years, eventually reaching over 50 million views and 300,000 followers on a platform that had nothing to do with dancing skill and everything to do with freedom.
* * *
Here’s what I think is actually going on. Most people don’t live the life they want, the way they want to live it, saying and doing what they actually want to say and do. Especially men. Because the fear of judgement, the fear of being seen in the wrong light, runs deeper than almost anything else we carry.
And there I was, not caring. Just dancing.
I had wasted so much of my life worrying about being liked, about fitting in, about numbing the parts of myself that might put people off, that it never once occurred to me that being truly, unapologetically myself might draw people closer rather than push them away. That the people I actually wanted in my life would find me, and like me, precisely because of who I really was.
Silly. Energetic. Sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine. Someone who loves to laugh and smile and let his feelings take him wherever they’re going to take him, fuelled by curiosity and exploration rather than fear of getting it wrong.
* * *
People still ask me sometimes why I dance, and why I post it for the world to see.
Here’s the honest answer. Because I like to. Because it feels good. And because every single time, it reminds me that I’m not living for anyone else but me.
So I’ll keep dancing. Until I can’t anymore.
What would you do if you stopped worrying what anyone thought?
Belong to yourself first. Everything else follows.