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How Do I Know If I’m Normal?
A question many of us ask, but often once we reach a certain age and stage, we stop caring
As a child, I tortured myself in my quest for confirmation that I was normal. That I was like everyone else. I lived for approval and acceptance. To be integrated into the tribe.
When I use the word normal, I’m really talking about showing up in a way that is standard and socially acceptable. Blending in with the status quo and being unremarkable.
As a youngster, I was painfully shy and highly sensitive, with low confidence and self-esteem. The makings of easy prey.
Bullies ate me up for breakfast. I still carry the scars inflicted on me by some childhood bullies. My bullies were people I lived with, both in my immediate family and at boarding school.
Being myself was unsafe. So I learnt to mask and create a persona to survive. Studying the popular people in my sphere, I digested how they conducted themselves and quickly learnt that being bold, funny, and sometimes even mean won acceptance and approval from my peers. So that’s who I became.
By fourteen years old, I was labelled as the crazy one in my girlie group of crazy, sexy and cool. We even had individual rings with our identities — a trio of individuals all…
