The Land of Normalcy

The insidious part of feeling better is that everyone, especially myself, wants everything to go back to being Normal.  And Normal is a country in which I no longer fully belong.

Normal people make plans and can assume they will usually be able to follow through with them. These plans can include recreational things, like having dinner with friends, or going to a concert. These plans can include extended learning experiences, like enrolling in fun classes or gardening. These plans can include going to the Apple store to get a new phone because, oh, just for example, you were carrying too much fucking shit in your hands yesterday and dropped the fucking phone on fucking Fair Oaks Boulevard and cracked the hell out of the screen.

Normal people could deal with that.

Normal people have civilized, light, friendly conversations at dinner.  Their nerve endings are not exposed, waiting for the first opportunity to get aggravated. Their heart isn't just barely healed, the thinnest of membranes holding it together, just waiting to be broken again into a multitude of pieces.

On the other hand, Normal people aren't being bludgeoned over the head with the knowledge of their own mortality. In the land of Normalcy, life is full of an infinite number of petty grievances, unspoken frustrations, and simmering resentments. Normal people are generally pretty miserable, in a low grade way, because having no big picture perspective allows for the smaller picture stuff to grow magnificently in proportion.

Being Normal is like sitting bare-assed on a black ant hill, covered with creepy little bugs which won't exactly kill you but will make you wish you were dead.  Being outside of Normal is like looking down the barrel of a gun, so sure it will go off that you would do anything to stay alive.

I am a citizen of neither country and a visitor to both today.  I am OK enough to be bugged to shit by just about every human being I encounter (including, but not limited to, everyone who shops at an Apple store and everyone who works at an Apple store). I am OK enough to be ground down by the constant and still-prevalent soreness in my body.  But I am not OK enough to forget how really facing a good life-or-death crisis can make all the other shit disappear.  I am not OK enough to take the petty stuff lightly.

It is a dicey day here in the borderlands. A day without crisis enough to feel that delicious detachment from the mundane. A day without health enough to go out and bike, or swim, or engage in the world in a happy lighthearted way. I walk, I stand in line in the Apple store (and don't even get me started on the genius bar or their organizational structure that is so overly designed that you can't really find someone to help you, you have to kind of stumble upon them, in a, you know, intuitive way, because hierarchical systems are sooooo old school, so linear, so non creative), I manage my paperwork, I do my Sunday things.

But I'm not in the land of Normalcy yet. Nor am I feeling the glories of the anarchistic frontier.