May 06 2008
What is normal?
What is wrong with me?
I had no friends. I knew I was different. I just could not seem to make that emotional connection. I could find things in common, but was at a loss for companionship.
I liked her. She was in a wheel chair, new to our tiny town, and quiet like me. I tried to reach out to her, wanted to push her around the lines on the sidewalk that I usually walked heel to toe by myself.
She would sit by the building watching me, sometimes. Other times she looked out at the other children playing. One day she asked me, “What’s wrong with you?” I could not answer, but I knew exactly what she was referring to.
Why was I there in the middle of an empty playground walking in circles on painted white lines? Why wasn’t I out there running around with all of the other kids, laughing and playing?
One day she let me push her along the lines I obsessively followed during every recess. She tried to talk to me while I pushed her, but I was unable to engage in a conversation with her. I wanted to, but the words just would not come. She abruptly grabbed the wheels of her chair and spun off, leaving me standing alone and as alienated as ever.
I had thought at first that she was like me. I was different.
What is wrong with me?
What is normal?
If you could define that for me, I would be surprised.
What is abnormal?
Well now, there is a long list of attributes, behaviors, and health conditions associated with this word.
By my definition, normal is having a family, a good job, a decent car, and a warm house to go home to every night. I have these small things. However, I can still be considered abnormal. In fact, my list of abnormal exceeds this small list.
So where does that leave me. To be certain I am not as abnormal as I used to be. I can hold a conversation and I can get straight A’s in college. I can even look normal to the outside world.
Here I am at the door of normalcy, looking in at all those people who fit my profile, and then some. When I close the door to my warm home, I look around for those things that provide me with the image of normal and think, someday, maybe someday I will accept that what is normal for other people will not be normal for me.
Therefore, I am left to confine myself to the following standard or otherwise disable myself.
What is normal in Jessie definition is that I am what I am. If that changes tomorrow, then tomorrow I will still be normal, that is, for me.
Jessie
