Normal
A lot of people say that, to some extent, they always knew. They felt ‘different,’ somehow. Looking back now I can see that. I knew I felt different, I just didn’t have the words for it. So I brushed it off.
Tenth grade I think. Yeah, tenth. A year of nothing much important - you’re not a freshman, you’re not an upperclassman, you’re just there. And I was just there. Quiet, unassuming, a rule follower. A good girl.
September. Tuesday nights, a new teacher. Stella, with caramel-colored crazy long hair and eyes to match. She had three freckles in the corner of her face that made a triangle. Funny how I remember that.
A Tuesday, unassuming as ever. I don’t know what it was about that day. I can’t remember what she was wearing or what I was wearing or what the date was. I just remember the feeling. The thought, actually, flicking across my mind just for a second. A split second. But then the thought exploded and it was all-encompassing. I shut it down, hard.
Oh, but it lurked. Don’t they always. Happy thoughts, nice thoughts, pleasant memories, they wash away from your consciousness like footprints on the wet sand. But revelations, nasty dreams, unpleasant realizations, they stick. Hiding in corners even if you sweep your mind clean. So I thought. Every Tuesday, reminded.
I began to battle myself as the thought became a permanent fixture in my mind, like a tomato sauce stain you just gave up trying to get out of your white shirt. Only I can’t throw out this shirt, or get a new one. I tried everything- bleach, dry cleaners, OxiClean, hell I even tried to cut that damn stain out. Nothing worked.
I gave up eventually, broke down. That stain was there, permanently, forever. When I couldn’t blame the shirt, I blamed the wearer. What is wrong with me? Why aren’t I normal? Why did this happen now? Where’s this been the past 16 years? What will people think?
I began answering my own questions. You freak. You’re wrong. You’re a genetic mistake. A rough draft too terrible to salvage. People will mock you and scorn you and you can never ever tell.
I listened to my own advice. Buried it down; kept it locked away but still visible, though only to me. But then I had another one, another damn revelation. I’m really starting to hate these things.
I was just minding my own business, being my half-hid horrified self, when I realized: what would He think? I wasn’t stupid, I read the news. I knew what the church people thought. Was this sin? Oh God, I’m a sinner. I’m scum. I’m unnatural and unwanted and unlovable and what on earth am I going to do?
It took a while, it really did. Three months of battles in a war I appeared to be losing. But I watched videos. I searched google. I looked for others who knew at least something about what was going on. And inch by inch, bit by bit, two steps forward one step back, I found a way to be okay.
April. Almost May really. No one knew but me. To the world, I appeared exactly the same, but to me, I had finally come to a realization that didn’t make me want to scream.
My weirdness has a name! My not normal matches with other people’s not normal! We could be un-normal together! It was the happiest I’d been in months. I was finally okay again. Not normal, but not alone.
Only I was alone. No one, aside from my own head and heart, knew I was a different person on April 28th then I had been April 27th. Could I… tell someone? Who? Her? No. Him? Absolutely not. Them? Never in all of eternity, no.
I picked a person. Can I tell you something? Oh, the waiting. It physically hurt. I’ve never been so nauseous. You can’t tell anyone, okay? It’s a secret. Yet I felt free. I was whatever this was, someone knew I was something, and she cared. Or, rather, she didn’t care, which was the most amazing part. The Someone Normal accepting the Someone Un-Normal.
Over time it got easier actually. The First became the Second. A text. Then an inquiry, a nervous asking-telling session that ended with shared secrets and mutual trust. The Third. I started losing count after that. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, at least. I don’t mind anymore. The rush of nervous adrenaline; then, the relief of a new person joining my side. A new closeness, a trust. Another rock taken out of the heavy backpack that had become mine to bear.
Of course there was always that brain-numbing spine-crumbling soul-crushing complete terror that someone would tell. But hey, you learn to live with it.
That is until the day is just a little too long and the people are a little too much and you go numb and then explode in a flurry of tears. You bear your soul, bruised and bloody, to someone whom you didn’t know meant as much to you as they do now. They hold you, and deliver yet another revelation: it’s actually really emotionally taxing to hold it in from people close to you.
I had never even considered the fact that it was hard. It had been nearly a year by now, the un-normal had become normal and the new normal was just something I had to deal with. Some people knew, others didn’t; it was just a fact of life.
A very specific group of people didn’t know, the people I was most scared to tell, the huge boulder of granite weighing down my backpack. I had debated in my head, over and over, should I do it should I do it should I do it and the answer was always no no no no no. I lived in constant fear, almost wanting to tell, but yet terrified of them finding out, learning to be a different person at home than at school.
So here I am, a new person, two people, different. Defined, molded, mostly shown, partially hidden. My own special kind of normal. To the world I am different, a freak, a reject, but I don’t care. I don’t need to be normal. I’m extraordinary.
*Note: this essay is a work of fiction designed to convey emotion, not facts or memories*
