Normal

Normal.
 

I just want to be normal.
 

We all think it. We say it. We cry it out into the universe.
 

I think when we say we want to be normal we really mean that we want to be perfect.
 

We don’t want messy feelings.
We want tidy relationships.
We want things that make sense, that fit into boxes.
We don’t want to have pain or struggles.
We don’t want to feel rejected or on the outside.
We crave acceptance. We crave love. We crave stability.
 

In our heads, these things come so naturally and abundantly to normal people.
The problem is that normal people don’t exist.
Perfect, tidy, neat, whole, people are something we’ve imagined.
It’s an expectation we made up to express what we want;
but there is no secret colony of normal people.
There is no utopia where everyone has it together,
everyone knows what they want, how to get it, and then does it.
 

What we have to accept, what I have to accept, is that we are truly normal.
Normal is messy.
Normal is confusing.
Normal is weakness and struggle.
Normal is coping and finding new ways to live in the midst of life’s constant meteor-shower.
 

Those desires for love and acceptance and stability are deep and valid;
but the solution is not to somehow get rid of all the things that make you you and become normal.
 

The solution is to first accept yourself, love yourself, create a safe space within yourself for yourself.
Then slowly, like roots reaching out their tendrils to find water, we branch out and connect with other sources of life: beliefs, people, purposes, passions, nature.
 

Along the way we create our own normal;
and normal is ever changing.
Normal only lasts a season, then it shifts and sheds and is born into something wholly new and necessary.
 

So yes, I want to be normal;
but what I really want is to see that I already am, and to learn how to be just so.