Normalcy?

You all, I m not sure what's going on with me but I am starting to suspect that I have become normal.

For years, I mean yeeeeaaaars, I tried to be normal. To be like how I thought everyone else was, or anyway, how most people were. To blend in.

I was sure I was weird. My family was weird.

Nowhere did I try harder than at college. And no matter what I wore or how closely I could get my accent to sound like that of my peers,  I never, ever felt like I fit anywhere.

But I could always kind of stand on the fringe or just stay quiet and not really be noticed.

What I didn't realize was that the people of most interest to me were not the norm. That's what made them appealing.

And after way more years than I like to admit, I realized how not interested I am in normalcy. How ordinary, to me, is an insult. I do not strive to blend.

I think I got to the point where I looked pretty normal, and I often dress kind of conservatively (don't I? I think I kind of do.) But at some point I knew for a fact that I thought differently than most people. And I enjoyed it.

It wasn't an effort to be different. It was just finally accepting who I was and reveling in it.

And now! Now I'm all, shit! I think that maybe I've actually started to...blend.

So then I think, maybe now I'm normal. And I need to stop seeing that as a negative. It just is.

I'm a wife, a mother of two. I unload the dishwasher and reload it and do laundry and get enough exercise and take vitamins and either cook nutritious things for dinner or don't and feel guilty about it. I do so many ordinary things, things that have to be done, and some of which I don't even mind, but don't find particularly interesting.

I'm sitting in the corner muttering "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Seriously, this thought is troubling.

It's not that I need to be some special snowflake. Or one of those carnival people who bites the heads off chickens. But I'm terrified that I've lost the funny. And the weird. I like the weird. I'm afraid that interesting things don't occur to me anymore.

I used to walk around seeing stories everywhere. But now, now I don't. I don't feel sparked.

And not in the terrible flat grey depression kind of way. Because angst is its own driver. This is more like, well, ok. Here's what it's kind of like.

I'm a city person. I joke that I like nature best through a window, and that's not entirely true but it really is some large percentage of the time and depending on the place.

So I like hiking if it's a serious physical challenge or really exotic. But just hiking in nature for hours is not my thing. Because at some point I am all, yes, the nature. It's pretty. It's pleasant. And these trees look like the trees an hour ago. And this tramping around is kind of repetetive.

And when can we bathe and put on cute clothes and find a corner cafe and get a cup of coffee?

That is how I feel. Like inside my head lately is perfectly nice and pleasant--which, don't get me wrong--is a positive in so many ways. But it is not of great interest to me.

Maybe now I've hit normal? Whatever that might be?