Chapter 1: What’s Normal?

Sometimes you get small hints, other times you get billboards on the highway.        

This was a billboard on the highway moment. It wasn’t until now, in my mid-twenties, that we began to realize (and admit) there might be a disorder in the family. My sister Darling had mentioned something about struggling with mental something or other. I had just assumed that her husband was making that up in an attempt to gain control of her and have her committed. In our family, it is always the other guy’s fault. If you were to say that we suffered from denial and lack of understanding, it would be a gross understatement. My father thought that I was simply having behavioral problems. Not only were we in denial, not only did we not recognize the signs of mental illness, in our opinion psychiatry was a profession full of quacks. It was the perfect storm for an awakening.

There we stood the three of us in the kitchen together again. I always swore that I’d rather be homeless than to move back in with my parents. But when that flippant thought made its way to reality, homeless didn’t look so appealing. So there we were all under one roof again.

Searching for answers, my father picked up the phone and called my sister Darling. He asked her some specific questions about her health history. Then he gave the phone to me. I don’t recall the exact words that were exchanged.  I do remember giving her the cliff notes version of my recent, how should I put it…adventures. I remember specifically telling her that I thought I was Jesus. She responded with, “That’s normal.” That’s normal for whom? It’s normal for people who have bipolar disorder with psychotic features.

Healing is not a state of being. It’s a process.

Darling tried to make me feel better by telling me a short story of a woman in her town that has bipolar disorder. The woman felt prompted to steal a mail truck and steal that mail truck she did!  After all, voices in your head can be quite compelling. That was my first lesson in finding the humor within the illness.

I wondered if I would be crazy forever. I asked Darling how long it took for the medicine to start working. In the mental health world, they call it “finding the right cocktail”. She told me they could take up to six months to find the medication that works and sometimes longer. Much further down the road, she would admit that she told me six months so that I would not get discouraged.

The process of finding your cocktail can take anywhere from a few weeks to many years. It took me over 10 years. Thank goodness I didn’t know that was going to be the case. I assumed that I was going to be one of the lucky few that found their cocktail within a few weeks and that would be that. Because of the overwhelming nature of the illness, a large number of people who have bipolar disorder end up dead from suicide before they regain their chance at a normal life. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I considered ending it all more than a few times. I even had the whole thing planned out. I was going to hop into the shower and shoot myself square in the head. It was a very small glimmer of hope that kept me going. Looking back, I’m glad that I did keep going because eventually, they did find my cocktail and finally I am living a very productive life. But it took years of anguish and heartache.

I didn’t know how sick I was. I didn’t know how I was affecting my family and friends. I didn’t realize the ripples I was causing in the lake of life. I didn’t know a lot of things. I certainly didn’t know about mental illness.

You don’t seem normal…but I’m no Freud.

Like a mythical tale, it has been whispered by some seemingly wise people that there exists an amazing state of being that goes by the name of ‘normal’. Those same people seem to believe that if one achieves this normal existence, that it will bring happiness and prosperity. Finally I was normal, normal for a mental patient. That was not exactly what I was going for.

 “You’re not normal.” Has anyone ever told you this? I remember a particular time that it was said to me. When this cutting and mysterious statement was directed at me, the dagger rang its way through my soul. Deep down I wasn’t so sure I could act normal. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure that I even knew what that was. Admittedly, this wasn’t the first time someone said this to me, but in this particular moment, it was coming from someone that I loved whom I wanted desperately to love me back. I felt I was coming up short as a person. Was there something wrong with me?

Years ago, in my defense, I came up with the sarcastic argument that normal wasn’t even real. I joked, “What came first the normal or the abnormal?” Somewhere inside of me, I wanted to know where this normal existed, if it existed at all. So I began a quest to find it. I looked for it everywhere. I’ve trekked through land and sea. I couldn’t find it. No two people were the same. Sure they may be similar in some way or another but normal…really?

Then I started thinking of ways that people behave in order to achieve what they perceive to be normal. I made a discovery. People often join together and hide themselves in these things called ‘groups’. By grouping themselves together, they could say, “Hey! Look at me. I’m just like the next guy. I’m not weird. I fit right in.”

There are those charming East Coast conservatives who wear sweaters, drive Volvo’s and always look like they’re ready to go boating? Bikers move in packs. They are covered in tattoos. They move around in their packs wearing leather and riding shiny, tripped out monster bikes. Is that normal? Or, what about those flamboyant homosexual liberals, are they okay? What’s going on with them? How about those good old doctors, those medical professionals who wear scrubs and comfortable shoes everywhere they go and slide medical terminology into every day conversation. They’re not normal. No way. Still, my favorite group has to be the average family. I’m referring to the kind hearted every-dayers, the soccer moms and blue collar dads. These are the tried-and-true working class who go to work by 8 a.m. and come home by 6 p.m. to have dinner with their family. That’s pretty normal, right?

Travel across the world and behold there are even more groups: Infidels, sinners, saints, heathens, Scientologists, Devil worshipers, Mormons, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Hindus…the fat opera singers, the poor skinny loners, the beauty queens, the toothless hicks, the North Shore surfers…the young college students, the old rollers, the choir boys and the punk rockers…the corporate vampires and the government ghouls…all groups, all different types of people, all living different lives.

I couldn’t help but notice that even the most normal groups were judged by other groups as being abnormal. Yes, what was normal to some was strange and unusual to others. I discovered that ‘normal’ is as elusive as they come.

We are what we pretend to be.

There was something else that I was beginning to notice about being normal. People actually pretend to be normal. They go to great lengths so that they can ‘fit in’. For example, someone might wear shoes that make them look taller, or someone else might dye their hair to make themselves appear younger. There are also people out there pretending they’re someone they’re not in order to avoid ridicule or trouble. I know it happens. I’ve even done it. And if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you’ve done it too.

Pretending has an air of fun to it like dressing up for a play, Halloween or cross-dressing. It’s a little like a chameleon lizard sneaking around, getting a feel for its environment then changing to blend into the environment. Pretending allows us to get away from real for just a little while. We put down our everyday mask and the burden it carries for a small moment in time to be something or someone else.

“Oh I don’t do that.” you might be saying. Come on. Who hasn’t bought a new shirt or a new dress in order to feel better or different? Everyone pretends. If our version of normal isn’t working, sometimes we try on other versions to see if that version will work better for us. Sometimes we shed our skin and our new version of normal becomes better than our old one.

Gandhi said, “Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it, even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.”

Some people pretend for a short time and others, pretend their whole lives. In fact, I propose that most everyone pretends most every day of their life in order to survive. They pretend while seeking for things like money, happiness, sex, and chocolate

Pretending can work as a coping solution for walking around happy despite a bad situation you may find yourself in. I’ve experienced a great deal of pain in my life. You know the kind of pain I’m talking about. It’s that pain that hurts so much inside that you feel like the whole world should stop spinning. It’s the moment you realize that this world can be a very bad place and the weight of that discovery curls your shoulders. This kind of pain keeps you from breathing right and binds you up inside until you go mad. And I did go mad.

Sadly, pretending in all its glory wasn’t going to fix my situation. It was time to accept my new found normal status and bloom where I was planted. If my group was the mentally ill…I was going to accept it…right after I blamed everyone else for all of my problems…and denied my faith in God.