I Wish I Was Normal

At your age, there’s a lot of pressure to conform to society’s expectations of you. When I was a teenager, I judged myself based off how well I did according to other people’s expectations of me, whether it was my parents, teachers, friends.

I wanted to be normal, which I thought of as some combination of being popular, optimistic, smart, and attractive. I tried to resemble what I thought was ‘normal’ and I ended up feeling miserable. Because the truth is that none of us are ‘normal’, but we try as hard as we can to appear to be.

Doing this can cause us to be our own worst critics. By the time we become adults, we internalize the standards of our society and become our own tormentors. I used to look at my failures (not having any friends, being alone all the time) as evidence of my inherent worthlessness and failure as a human being.

What I had to realize, and what ended up saving me, is that everyone suffers. I hated when anyone told me this growing up because I felt like they were diminishing my own very real and painful suffering. “They’re not all lonely like me!”

It was only through finding people whom with I could share my suffering that I was able to connect my pain to others. This is what is meant by “everyone suffers.” Your pain, your loneliness, your anguish is not what separates you from others, but it is exactly what connects you.

I didn’t really have anyone I could call a friend until after I graduated high school. I felt inferior about this. When I eventually made a few friends in college through my interests in weightlifting and basketball, I used to hide many parts of myself that I felt ashamed of. The fact that I didn’t have many friends in the first place, or that I had never kissed a girl.

When I eventually revealed my most vulnerable sides to my friends, some of my fears did come true. Some people thought less of me and we no longer were friends. But, some of my friends began to open up and share their own stories. People who I viewed as perfectly happy and successful shared to me their own darkest moments that mirrored my own.

These experiences expanded my view of suffering. Instead of the acute and concentrated self-hatred and pain, my window was opened up to pains, doubts, and sufferings of others. What swept in were questions upon questions. And with that, I knew that my whole worldview was beginning to change.

If so many people are indeed suffering and trying to deal with the paradoxes of being alive, then where are my beliefs coming from? Are they based on valid assumptions? Who decided whether something has worth or not? Can a human being have worth just for existing? What are is the meaning of ‘loser’ or ‘winner’, where do they come from? Why was I alone?

Now all these questions lead to the realization that you are responsible to no one but yourself. Because everyone suffers, will age, and die. Only you can decide the meaning (value) you attribute to yourself, your life, and others.

I no longer desired to be normal or strive to be like others, but decided that the only thing I could ever be was myself. Since I was essentially striking out my own path, all of my past, my failures, my regrets were no longer things I could allow to tie me down. I would have to use my past.

I began to see my past in different light. Instead of my years of being friendless being a mark of shame, it became a unique experience that gave me a distinct viewpoint on life. I could see the same loneliness in others and feel it with deep empathy for I know what it feels like to spend so much time alone. This is when kindness began to replace my tears.

The very fact that I had no friends, no love, no kindness growing up shaped itself into a hardened resolve to give my friendship, my love, and my kindness to other people. And it became a strong and powerful resolve because it was based not on trying to live up to some former glory of being a happy little kid, but on the ideal that my most loving, most caring, most beautiful days lay somewhere in the possibilities of the future, and that I had the responsibility and power to bring them to fruition.

Your suffering in the valley will purify you and give you immense strength for your journey to the summit. I chose to believe this.

The nature of life is that there will always be another mountain, and one day we won’t have the ability to climb it. But I believe it is the most beautiful thing in the human spirit to answer the question of “Why do we fall?” with the stubborn response of “To get back up!”