WHAT IS NORMAL?

WHAT IS NORMAL?

Over twenty years ago, a group of people I worked with, got all fired up again with the need to challenge stigma and raise awareness about mental ill health.

We designed a series of exciting postcards to get across challenging or intriguing messages. One of these had a heading which was “What is normal?” and behind it a picture of a white sheep in the middle of a flock of black sheep. We were all excited about the idea of the Black sheep of the family and turning this on its head.

It was a truly wonderful project. We had thousands and thousands of different cards with different designs printed. We had holders to put them in for free collection in pubs, libraries, hospitals, cinemas; all sorts of places.

On the day of the launch, I was meant to give the opening talk at the press conference even though I was not the real lead for the project. I stood up, started talking and then slowly found my vision blurring, my words scattering and becoming slow; a white panic creeping into my stomach and until my words stopped and a dear friend and the true project lead, guided me to a seat and took over from me.

They were innocent days; a chance for the heat of the indignation at the rejection of difference, both perceived and real, to shine bright and for us to say;

“Come and talk to us, meet us, recognise our joint humanity, the kindness and the love we feel; just like you do. See our talents and our abilities, discover our backstories and realise there are all sorts of different ways of perceiving us and most of them are good.”

I loved those days; they were so busy and so successful. For years afterwards I would come across people who had saved those cards and put them in their office or on their fridge.

In those days we were speaking at conferences or in schools; asking schoolchildren to draw their idea of what a person with schizophrenia looked like and when they had drawn a wild man with fangs for teeth, dripping blood; we revelled in the astonishment and interest of the children when we revealed that that was my diagnosis and that we are really pretty normal after all. We told our stories to the people who detained us. We read poetry, created exhibitions and central to all of it was: We may be different but we are also just like you, we are the people who you might become; we are your brothers, sisters, lovers, children and there really is nothing to be wary of.

Now many, many, years later and after many more times in hospital on a section, I wonder?

I no longer feel normal in a slightly odd but maybe slightly lovely way. I no longer think I am just like everyone else and I no longer want to celebrate my difference.

Nearing my sixtieth birthday I am weary and although my life is better than it has ever been before; I realise that it is scattered with pain and the knowledge of a difference that now, at last, I realise I wish was not a part of me and never had been.

I used to laugh at how my well off parents had wanted a life for me, similar to their own perhaps; middle class, married with children, a nice big house, a good job, dinner parties and safe conversations, skiing, sailing, rosy smiles, good schools and said that the life I had led instead, was so different and so much better than that.

I know we should be proud of our difference; be glad to be mad, but I am not.

I am not in the slightest pleased with the memory that at my first suicide attempt my little sister just did not understand; had her certainty and hope and pleasure ripped out of her very young and very safe life, or that my mother, who had always been so full of smiles and laughter, took to taking long walks in the hills, leaving whoever was at home to make the dinners she no longer thought about or how my dad would get drunk, get me drunk too and when we were well and truly drunk reach out for a sentimental hug he wouldn’t dare to try sober. Try it even though he knew I blamed him for my pain and that I would finish the night accusing him of I do not quite remember what anymore.

I am not at all comfortable with my memories. Of my devastated marriage, my son I no longer see, my scars, my times on constant observations, learning I was frightening my neighbour’s children with my behaviour.

I don’t care if this is not of my making, that this is an illness that I cannot control and shouldn’t be blamed for, it is still a part of me; a bit of who I am.

When my partner begs me to speak because I have no words and spend most of my time at home, almost mute because the pretence of charm I have at work is too painful and exhausting to carry on at home or, when I am in company, I smile fit to burst but haven’t a clue how to join in the conversation. I flush with the shame at what people think of awkward, inarticulate, me.

It is all very well to say we need to accept and live with difference but look at the last couple of weeks. For those two weeks I have had the best time in years; somehow that echo chamber where I have no emotion, where my life is more a smear of a life than something real, where my gaze is blurred and my imagination crawls at such a pace that I cannot connect with the vibrancy of those around me; that went. For days I have been connected with myself and my emotions. Being unreal, dead almost, has fallen from me.

Why! One day I found myself gargling a tune in a game with the children and laughed so much I spluttered water all over the table and, to my astonishment, realised that this was the first time in, I don’t know how many years, that I had laughed in such a way that I was really laughing instead of going through the motions.

It breaks my heart that that has been my life and that I have not been able to be in the way I wish I could have been for all those I love.

I feel so much for those I love and who somehow love me, that, for most of the time, they are dealing with a facsimile of me and when they aren’t, they are dealing with someone with bewildering beliefs that could lead to my death and the untold trauma that would do to the children.

This is something to accept? To be proud of? This is the bright reality of the “What is normal?” postcards?”

No! I don’t want that and neither do I like the “Dare to be you” adverts. I am slowly opening my eyes to the playgrounds the children inhabit; slowly realising that for all our ideals; that children like to fit in, like convention, find some forms of difference frightening. In fact so frightening that the weird children, like I was, find themselves on the outskirts; never invited to parties, never in the middle of excited games in the playground; instead crouched, alone, in corners staring at the ground, waiting for the day someone finds some label for them and moves them even further from the norm.

I am just like my parents now. I hope that the children always have friends, have people who want to speak to them, are not talked about in that ‘other’ way – I don’t want them to grow up to find joy in a new set of postcards that painfully say that, despite our oddity, we are still, in some strange way, loveable.

I don’t want anyone to experience that.

I stamp my foot! In desperation I say;

“Stop distress, stop pain, stop the terrible behaviour we can end up displaying when we have been excluded, abused and exploited. Stop sadness, stop our instinctive need to avoid sadness and tears and anger and weird words. Make the world one of flowers and love and compassion.”

As if!!

I know my dim and distant self had the right idea; that the acceptance of difference is what we need but my difference is sometimes unacceptable to me and sometimes to others and yes, of course I know there is no such thing as normal, but how I yearn to be normal; to be like how I imagine other people are.

I would like to trust men. I would like to know how to party. I would like to know how to sleep through the night. To know how to play with the children. If I could know that I wasn’t responsible for every tragedy in the world, if I could stop drinking, if I could speak to the school mums at the school gates and know when to not share my most intimate thoughts, if I could play golf, think of things for us to do if, if, if….

I hate almost beyond expression being different. I want to walk down the street and recognise my neighbours. I want to wander downstairs and dance with the joy of being with my new family and not think I am the cause of their suffering. I would like to live for one day at least without wanting to die. One day at least when I can guarantee that my laugh will be my own.

Maybe it is too much to ask but can I live that dream where I never needed to plead for my acceptance and the acceptance of people like me? Where I have never had to try to find some way of me accepting me?

Where life just is: you live it, love your family and friends and never for a moment doubt your right to it or the certainty of your journey?

It is only now that I realise just what we were saying when we were saying “What is normal?” We were not saying;

“Stop rejecting us; after all we are just like you; we are as full of fun and laughter and talent as anyone else you meet.”

No; we were saying:

“We are not normal. We are often not pleasant. Our lives can cause untold pain to you. Our pain often causes us untold pain. We can be so disgusted by ourselves that we rip chunks out of us, and rip your hearts with our lacerating anger at the world we live in. You need to deal with this because this is what the world is really like for so many of us. You need to accept us warts, delusions, anxiety and all, even when that harms the certainty of your own lives.”

To be honest I am not sure I can accept that either; I am not brave enough. I really do think the world should be meadows of daisies that we all dance among until we curl up to sleep in the orange blossom scented warmth of a summer evening and wake in the morning, ready to stretch our arms out to dance some more, maybe sit by a stream; play some music…

That is the life I want. I don’t want reality or normality at all.

You can find out more about HUG (action for mental health) at https://www.spiritadvocacy.org.uk/hug

(Photo: HUG; what is normal postcards)