What is normal?

No really, what is it?

If there’s something that’s dogged me all my life, it is the sensation that I’m not normal, that there’s a fundamental way in which most people are similar to each other but different from me. I first recall feeling this way in first grade¹. I may have independently discovered the concept of neurotypicality, and indeed, reading accounts from the lives of autistics resonates a lot with me, in a “Holy shit! It all makes sense now!” way.

In my volunteer work, I’ve been floating the following question with the other volunteers:

Do you think normal people exist?

I’ve gotten the same answer each time:

It’s contextual.

Shortened, but that’s what they’re saying, and somehow, it rings hollow: I feel there are people who no one would ever think are weird, and people who definitely stand out as weird, no matter what.

I suppose I feel like a weirdo, though I don’t know, the other day I managed to strike up a 3 hour long conversation with a woman I met in a bar. I even told her I attempted to invent a religion once (which is what led to The Question), and surprisingly, this did not end the interaction, and she was willing to be ridden home by me. All important milestones really, even though bars really aren’t ideal for me, as I really don’t like noisy places, to the point I would rather not go to them ever, which is another significant way in which I diverge from normal.

But what is normal, anyway? I feel like I go through phases of trying to be normal, then failing at it, leading to a lot of pain, and I may have begun the latest and most energetic of them, with the caveat that I’m beginning to understand why previous attempts failed.

Since this concept has mystified and tormented me for all my life, I figured it is worthwhile trying to get clear on it: what is normal?

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In first grade, the first time I became conscious of not being normal, that was definitely a two way street. I didn’t just notice the other kids were different from me, they also said I was weird, though the sense in which they were different from me was ineffable then (still is a bit now, but I think I can pin it down to some extent). In second grade, there was a memorable incident in which the class was getting really noisy and rowdy, and I got pissed off at all of them and couldn’t wait to tell the teacher, who was absent. Also in second grade, during some kind of summer camp, some kid was babbling about something to the other kids. About something dumb. And I, literally, full of naiveté, asked:

But why are you so stupid?

This was clearly a time before I had got sick with the desire for other people’s approval, which I think happened in third grade. These experiences also lay the foundation of what I think is normal:

1. Noise.

2. Superficiality.

I feel like what I call “normal people” are really drawn to noisy places. Parties. Clubs. Bars. Concerts. I’ve never had a good time in any of them, even when it’s a band I like, and what’s worse, it’s that I have been so infected with the notion that I should like them, that not liking them makes me feel like I’m wrong or pathetic. “I should like cutting loose and jumping around!” Ick, ick, ick. Granted, I was in a mosh pit once, and I found that fun², but that would be about my favorite part of punk/metal, two genres I never listen to.

Then there’s the superficiality. Left to their own devices, normal people will talk endlessly about surface level stuff. Popular culture. Trivia of their lives. I know I will have attained perfectly stable attention when I can remain engaged with this sort of thing: right now, it’s not very long before I drift off and get lost in daydreams. I do better in one on one conversations, where I can steer things into deeper territory.

Popular culture is also something I’ve never been able to get into. It all seems hollow and polished, like McDonald’s. It is a great mystery to me why popular culture is popular. It’s even disturbing.

Alternative stuff isn’t much better: I feel like alternative people are just normies wearing a different uniform. Alternative people are probably mostly neurotypical in the end, yet I don’t have that much experience with them, so there is definitely something superficial³ about this impression I have of them.

We’ll get to that, but I do want to clarify that “normal” itself is something superficial: I feel like whenever I get to know someone past the surface level, I always discover they’re crazy. Which sounds like a judgment, but I’m always thrilled to discover how someone is crazy!

“Normal” is partly a facade that normal people can put up so as to seem not weird, while of course, weird people can’t (or won’t) put up that facade.

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But there is something else that I think I categorize as “normal”, the thing that makes me think of alternative people as “normal”:

Happy

I think I have been suspicious of “happy” for a very long time, a very long time indeed: my parents have mentioned that when I was a toddler, and strangers, adults, would come to try to play with me, I would not smile, and only react by staring at them with a penetrating glare. I wonder what it was that toddler me was trying to see? I am told everyone is wearing a mask: perhaps I could see that clearly then, and I didn’t like it.

I feel “happy” is a very surface level, very trifling thing. I almost feel like it’s wrong to think that, but that’s honestly what I think. Like it’s… stupid.

But I am of two minds here. Attacking happiness is ridiculously edgy, yet, the idea that there is nothing superior to happiness also sits very wrong with me. Like there has to be something superior.

I am reminded of how, in Vajrayana Buddhism, it is taught that the condition of an ordinary person is that of a tiger who was raised to be a sheep, to live among sheep, and eat grass. When this poor confused creature encounters a real tiger, who knows he’s a tiger, and the tiger bounces up to them and tells them:

What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know you’re a tiger?

The sheep-tiger runs away in fright. They use this story to describe what it’s like to encounter a truly realized being when you’ve yet to taste realization. And in fact, when I first saw the person who relayed this story in video, I was terrified: I felt he had the eyes of a tiger. You can be the judge of that:

And well, tigers don’t seem happy to me:

They don’t seem unhappy either. It’s like they have transcended the happy-unhappy duality altogether and become something else, something really intense. Something that I REALLY like, and am REALLY drawn to. Give me that over dog-like happiness any day!

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This really clarified why previous attempts I have made at being normal failed: I tried to become what I have been laying out as normal here, which is now abundantly clear is something I immensely dislike. I tried to become something I hate, because of a desperate, grasping desire to fit in and be liked. Jeez, what a mess.

Having written this, I feel more real and solid now, like when I walked up to basically the hottest girl I volunteer with and told her I liked her and found her attractive, in a really idiosyncratic, but direct way. She rejected me, but I could tell she was flattered.⁴

Onward with the quest to lose my virginity…

1. I definitely had an awful time from kindergarten to college, and basically never really had a golden age period, though I feel one is within reach now.

2. I tend to enjoy destroying things, such that time Occupy Wall Street inspired me to hurl a rock through a bank's glass pane, and one recent incident where I ended keying up the car of some asshole who double parked in front of my building (I gave him a warning shot first by emptying out his tires, then he filled them back up and stayed double parked, so...)

3. Ironic...

4. So ok, this girl had been on my radar previously as pretty hot, but on this particular night, I noticed something else: she reminds me of a volcano. She’s that vivacious and has that much vim. At one point in the night, I found myself in a group conversation with her where I actually told her I thought she was volcanic, which she liked and gave me a high five for. We didn’t interact much after, but at the end of the night, I knew I had to make a move or I was going to explode. So I walked up to her and told her my full thoughts on the volcano:

I like the volcano. I’m attracted to the volcano. I don’t think I can handle it, but I still wish to try.

And I don’t know, maybe I should have asked for her instagram instead (LMAO), but I was satisfied with the attempt and satisfied with the outcome.