Leaving Normal

Sometimes I can pretend I’m ‘normal’. Sometimes I almost forget I’m not. I have a few minutes of blissful ignorance. When the temperature is just right. Maybe 86F. I’m on the back deck. The kids are playing in the yard. They’re not fighting. My husband is playing with them. And I forget. I forget about depression. About loneliness. About fear. About alcoholism. About misery. About dissatisfaction. About financial worries. About all of the suffocating issues of life. And I sit. Almost happily. No. Not quite happy. Just unaware of the pain. For a few moments. Sometimes I get multiple moments strung together. The illusion of a life of someone not me. Someone who works, sleeps, eats, has friends, goes on vacations, visits the doctors a few times a years, not a few times a week, not someone who virtually lived in the hospital last year, who’s on a first name basis with most of the E.D. security guards, who is known by all the psych ward staff, who doesn’t even blink when people on the train scream and roar, because she likely knows or at least has a good idea of their diagnoses. Who wishes it wasn’t so, because then she would still have a job. Still have somewhat of a life. Still be respected by those whose respect she has lost. Those who think she shouldn’t be writing this blog. Those who continue to read it… Why? To gloat? To see how much she’s fallen? Or because they genuinely care? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know. In fact maybe I won’t even know who they are. Who you are. The scars on my arms. You know. The ones I refuse to hide. I’m sure many many people look at me with disdain for showing them. I am not showing them. I am just not unshowing them. That is my choice. I know when it is 100F I will show them, therefore I chose to show them at 65F too, because I would have shown my bare arms at that temperature before. Before all this mess came. Before “Santoku” knives entered my vocabulary. Who knew I’d have a favorite knife to cut with? That my eyes would search the name “Santoku” over every other name when wanting to go to work on my lower upper limbs. Strange what fucked up things become normal. As I’m writing this, my right leg is bouncing up and down. I’m not sure if it’s nervous energy, or an urge to buy a Santoku. Maybe I should stop writing about it so specifically. Okay when vague, but not up close and personal. But oh so pretty, à la Gollum: We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. I was once told a picture of me looked like Gollum, and yes I am still friends with the fucker (you know who you are NOG), but probably only coz he married one of my besties! We assurezies you. I is not Gollum!

I am a ‘normal’ person with everything that goes with that: feelings; emotions; fears; joys (not so much anymore); jealousies; and on and on. I am also a broken person. Maybe forever. Does all this writing I do drag me down? Does it make me wallow in misery? Is it cathartic? In truth it is probably dialectical with both negative and positive aspects. When I feel an urge to write it is virtually unstoppable. Maybe not writing is more negative than any negativity brought on by writing.

I don’t think I’ve ever been normal. I don’t mean that I’m so special, a beautiful snowflake, a wonder to behold even in a negative light. I have only recently realized my thinking seems to be different from most other people’s. I don’t just mean with my mental illness, I mean since a very young age. It’s all starting to make sense. I always fit in by being the loud, gregarious one, the class clown, the fun one. Well I guess that’s not actually fitting in. I stick out like a patch of grass in a field of snow. Not inherently bad, but different. I have had friends, true friends, on and off. It’s not that I cannot have ‘normal’ (there’s that word again) relationships. It’s just that I notice I think differently from them. I see things differently. I act differently. I fuck up differently, and almost always more. Is it possible to bridge that gap? Do I have to fake being ‘normal’? We all know there isn’t actually a thing called normal. It’s a myth. Just because a majority of people think a certain way, doesn’t mean everyone else is wrong. I am not an axe murderer – not that I would admit it on here. I’m not that mentally ill. I feel empathy for other’s pain. I hug and need hugs like other people. I obey the law – although my ever growing number of speeding tickets would argue against that fact. I’m not saying I always have, but no more that the next guy. So I know I’m not a bad person. I have no concept of privacy. I understand why others feel the need not to talk about certain things, or do certain things, but I don’t. I just don’t feel it, have the privacy ‘switch’. I keep going around in circles trying to explain what I mean, and the truth is I’m not sure. Maybe being normal is overrated. Maybe I’m fine just the way I am. Or maybe it’s a big part of the reason I’m so fucked up. Maybe my Borderline Personality Disorder is to blame for it all. I doubt I’ll ever know. For now I guess I’ll just continue being me. I don’t know how to do otherwise.