Normal Is Such A Crap Word

Hello Anxiety...

I just want to be normal.

Normal is such a crap word. The definition may as well be a thing that doesn’t exist but we think exists. Normality is like trying to reach that last packet of Doritos at the top back of the shelves at the supermarket. You know you can’t reach it, but somehow still swinging your arms, going on your tip toes and generally looking like a loon helps. That may be a rubbish analogy, but you get it, right?

It’s that annoying game of piggy in the middle as a child that you soon gave up on and demanded it was time to change turns, despite it just being your go. Well at least that is what I feel about the word normal. In fact if you Googled it as I just have, you would realise it means conforming to standard, typical, expected. Ugh I don’t know about you, but the word normal seems to be as boring as eating the same thing all day every day for a year. Yet why do we crave a label that defines us as expected? How can anything be normal if things change around us all the time?

To you and me, we still just want to be normal. We say this, because we feel out of the loop and because we feel like our anxiety, depression or whatever it may be, stop us from what others seem to do with such annoying ease. But we forget. I forget. You forget. When we scroll up and down on Facebook getting our Sherlock on as we search through people’s Facebook lives (don’t deny you haven’t done it) or of course when we see someone in person and think – why can’t I be normal like them? Perhaps you may turn green with envy (not literally of course) or go into a misery coma of how their life is so much better than yours. But, how do you know there life is so great? If they are normal or rather if they feel normal? You don’t. Stop thinking you’re a physic with a crystal ball that can read into people’s minds. Or more sceptically we can’t read minds or be a fly on the wall to see what reality for them means. Remember everything is censored, just like films. U (you see what I did – film certificate *giggles anyway…) see only what people want you to see, especially on Facebook. A part from those embarrassing photos, you know the usual eyes closed in shot or being ruined by the flash. Anyway the moral here is, and I have been guilty of it is everything is not as it seems. 

Now I am not saying that person may have wanted to be like, has a double life where they do weird things like play dead (I actually researched this and there is actually someone who does this). However, satisfying and boosting that may feel, it is hardly ever that extreme. But you still get the gist.

When you feel like this (and I say ‘this’ because things can change and I mean optimistically), it is all too easy to get yourself tangled by normality. Perhaps to you feeling anxious, depressed or in pain is your normal or you simply feel divided by who you are and the group you call everyone else. This is why I like the quote be you because everyone else is taken. There is no one else like you. And no I don’t mean in the isolating or pessimistic way. In a good way.

Today bin the word normal. You are not boring. People don’t all look, dress, act the same. Get rid of the word normal because it stops you from changing for the better. It is the very thing that has you moving in that same anxious, depressed circle. It is that same voice that says you have to feel anxious and depressed because it’s normal. If you do the irony is that depression and anxiety will become your crutch. Without it to lean on you strangely become fearful of letting it go. This crutch then becomes your new normal.

 I know this, because I feel the same. Know that with you I will try to do the same thing. Set fire to the word normal and strive to be anything but. You can do anything. Don’t let yourself say otherwise.