What Do I Even Want?

Who wants normal lives? I think I do, but deep down…I think I’d get bored. 

I wasn’t raised normally. My mother was murdered when I was one years old. My dad never worked and lived off our inheritance. He was kinda on the creepy side, and today I don’t talk to him. I have a skewed relationship with my older brother. I have two half-brothers who don’t want to speak with me because I’m my dad’s daughter and still have his loathsome last name.  Various people have told me that I talk weird, laugh weird, dress weird. Even to this day, I don’t have a normal job, I’m a commercial actor. Some days my co-worker is a cat, another day it’s a puppet whose handler takes their job way too seriously. Most recently, my co-workers have been kids who I hardly know calling me "mom” whose careers I envy. Yes, I have been jealous of a 7 year old’s career. It’s happened more than once.

I’ve never had an ordinary life. So why do I crave normalcy so much? It’s like I’m hammering a square peg in a round hole. Sometimes I want it so badly, it even hurts. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I even want to be like everyone else? 

Something happened recently that reminded me of my abnormal childhood and family dynamic. I got sad and wished for a past that wasn’t mine. I wanted to force an idea of what I thought a normal person has and then act that out. But I can’t change people, and I certainly can’t change the past. I can’t undue my mother’s murder or even undue a haircut I had in 2nd grade. Those things are pretty much cemented. Yep, all of it. 

Apparently I wasn’t set up to have a normal life. I have to remind myself that what makes it unusual isn’t just the pain but the wondrous parts as well. I grew up without a mother, but I had the most special grandmother in the world. I’ve been given the upmost caring and loving aunts and uncle one could possibly have. I have friendships that are as strong as blood or in my case, way stronger. And oh my god, I’ve had one crazy experience after the next which makes for an exciting life and compelling stories to write and tell. 

When you don’t have an ordinary life, count your blessings… because it makes room to have an extraordinary one… that normal people sometimes wish they had.