Normal.
Please don’t ask me why I’ve been thinking about this concept for the past few weeks, but I have been, and, to be honest, my answer is NO.
No, sir, I am not normal.
And I am not saying that with pride because I don’t consider myself to be superior to anyone. But do I even want to be normal?
What does that mean?
What does that look like, a normal individual in a normal society?
I’ve been thinking about this from an ego standpoint, too. Maybe I am desperate for attention, and that is why I tend to do things differently.
I can honestly say that is not the case. Sometimes, I would love to fit in and conform, but I can’t.
For as long as I can remember, I have done things my way. I had average school results because I never saw the real purpose of formal education: going every day at the same hour to the same building, sitting neatly in the same square bench, in the same classroom with the same colleagues, and being taught boring stuff about the same bored people day after day.
It pains me even to remember.
I would have rather been outside, on the grass in the forest, on a lake, or anywhere else but not there. I couldn’t find my place. It was too serious and too formal for my taste.
Ok, I can see the point of math, chemistry, or fizics, but the rest seemed boring. Learning every day about some people who did great stuff somewhere in the past.
I have always wanted to live like one of those people, not just to read about them as if they were the beginning and the end of civilization.
So yes, formal, normal education and how it was set up did not work for me.
When you, as an individual, are not normal and don’t conform to society’s clear and straight lines, you need to make many choices every day. You need to make those choices because you don’t let yourself get carried by the waves or trends of the society you live in or the times you live in.
When you make many choices, you will inevitably make many mistakes because you are always traveling on a less traveled road, or maybe, sometimes, you find yourself on no road at all, and you have to improvise on the spot.
Many choices and many mistakes bring about many results.
Spring forward to me being 32 and finding myself in a loveless marriage with a person I barely knew and hardly liked. Divorce was inevitable.
Divorce, what an experience that is. If you can avoid it, do so. It is not for the faint-hearted, let me tell you that.
Now what?
Normal.
32, divorced, and with a nomad attitude towards life is not normal in today’s society. Lay down and wait for death to come, Cristian, because your life is over, seemed to be on the faces of those around me.
Well, sir, with all due respect, Fuck That!
I will not let my past decisions and mistakes dictate my legacy and my life.
I am not going to be normal, walking around in shame with a stigma on my back for the rest of my life. I am not going to enter a relationship with a dull person to be bored to death just to be “safe” and to avoid being alone for a while.
Life is going to kill me anyway because no one gets out of here alive, but when that time comes, I want death to find me singing Frank Sinatra’s My Way:
“And now, the end is near,
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way!
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way!
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all, and I stood tall
And did it my way!
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside
I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way
Oh, no, oh, no, not me
I did it my way
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way
Yes, it was my way”
I’d rather die on my terms than live on someone else’s.
Yes.
I am happy to say that I am not normal, and I am not special either.
I am myself, and I am trying to improve that self daily.
Sometimes, I am better at “humanizing,” and sometimes, I barely make it through the day.
But, at the end of the day, with my hand on my chest, I can say I am myself, and I remain as true and faithful as possible to the spark in my heart that guides me every day.
I don’t know where it will take me. It brought me through hell and out of it.
Normal?
No sir, not here, not me!
With love, yours truly, Cristian.