The Most Annoying Question: "What Is Normal?"
(With Regards To Humans And Their Behaviors)
I hate this question. It makes my stomach curl up and slap my lungs. I believe there are two kinds of people who ask this question, those who are NOT normal but don't want to be included in a grouping that might have negative connotations, or those who ARE normal and don't want to be excluded from a grouping that might prove to be a lot more interesting than the one they're in. Normalcy is not a value judgment. Being normal or not-normal isn't an indication of your coolness, or your acceptability as a human being, or your ability to contribute value to society.
Here is the dictionary description of normal: 1. conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal (that's so helpful); regular; natural. I think "natural" is a great place to start.
Perhaps I should mention that the reason I have developed such an avid animosity towards this question is that I have spent most of my life living on the other side of normal. I have had a lifetime to observe how others react to life's stresses such as taking tests in school and compare that to how I react to taking tests in school. I have been able to see what normal is by being the only one in art class to hear an alien ship landing outside, being the only one to realize there's a damn good reason to panic about it right now! (Until my friend pointed out that the noise I was hearing wasn't an alien ship, it was the school band practicing next door to the art room. Yikes.) I have come to understand what is normal by my ability to shut up an entire room of happy social people by simply stating what's on my mind. When thirty other people look at you like you just stepped out of a can of reddi-whip, you develop a deep sense of what is normal and what's not.
No matter how much some people don't want to believe there is such a thing as normal, everyone participates daily in defining what is common (and acceptable) human behavior by the way they react to everyone else. You can say that there's no such thing as normal, but people, like dogs, have an energy they carry around with them that always tells the truth about what they feel, and is incapable of projecting what they wish was true. Humans can tell a lot about each other just by the energy they are carrying inside of them. You could tell me that it's totally normal for a teen to cut themselves up with metal shavings found in the woodworking classroom, and aside from the fact that I would automatically know you were an ass for even saying something so patently stupid, I would know you actually found such actions abnormal, and probably creepy. (Unless you happened to be someone who's done that to themselves.) I can tell when someone is weirded-out by things they don't understand. I can tell when a subject makes a person afraid, because I can feel the fear surround them like a small toxic cloud.
Generally speaking, when a person exhibits behaviors that fall outside of the natural range of human behaviors, it's not because they desperately want to be different than everyone else to be cool, it's generally because something in their bodies isn't working optimally. Generally speaking (have you noticed my liberal use of the word "general"? I really mean it.) if something in your body isn't right and it's affecting your behaviors, it means your brain is involved. What I'm saying is: it's usually a strong indication that a person has some form of mental illness or other. Mental illness is becoming a pretty hot topic, and it's about time. For a stigma to be removed, it has to first be understood, to be understood it has to first be talked about at great lengths.
This is my first installment of writing on a subject that is incredibly important to me personally and is increasingly important to everyone else as mental illness is on the rise and getting pretty hard to stick in the little locked trunk every family likes to fill with bones and stick in their closets. I would continue with this subject right now but for two reasons: 1.) no one can take more than a few bites of this subject at a time and 2.) I have to go take my medication so that I can continue to live on this side of normal which is so much easier than living on the other side of it, as I did for the first thirty one years of my life.