Chapter 59: Normal is out of style
This week, my skills as a new chief resident physician were tested as the new intern class started their first week on the job. As I watched the interns sit in front of me learning how to use the electronic medical record system, find their way through the maze of a hospital we work in, and page their first attending physicians, I saw many emotions. I saw excitement, fear, hopefulness, anxiety, and happiness.
I reflected on how far I have come in the past three years. How, just three short years ago, I too was a nervous, excited intern physician. I remember for me, personally, my overarching goal at that time was to fit in, to feel “normal” and gain acceptance from my new colleagues. If I’m being honest, I remember feeling this way for much of my life.
As a child, I never felt like I fit in. I was teased relentlessly growing up: for my silly-shaped nose, my poor athletic skills, my studious personality, my social anxiety, and my overall shy personality. For years, I was terrified to go to school, to sit on the bus, to go to the cafeteria at lunch. My social anxiety was high. I was, simply put, a loner. I longed for acceptance.
I didn’t realize until quite recently that the only person I actually needed acceptance from was myself.
Growing up, I was the smart kid, the kid who left her second grade class to study algebra with the fifth graders, the kid whose teacher brought in a stack of literature for her to read in the corner while her third grade peers read Junie. B. Jones. I was the girl who spent free time sitting in the library instead of running around in the playground. I am still this kid, honestly. Only now, I love being this kid.
Maya Angelou once said, “If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
I found quirky, unique souls similar to me in grade school and felt intermittent senses of belonging with them. Many of these wonderful, “non-normal” soulmates became my best friends and remain so today ( I do not like the term abnormal. No one is abnormal, but some of us feel a sense of distance from the socially-accepted definition of normalcy.) In fact, last night I had dinner with many of these friends. We reminisced about how lucky we are to have found each other and how we are more than friends. In many ways, we are each other’s chosen family. How incredible, I thought to myself, that through the shared experience of non-normalcy, we have formed relationships that are unflappable. Despite our eclectic mix of careers, physical locations, relationship statuses, health concerns, and life events, there is no sense of longing to fit in with these friends. We fit in, because we do not fit in.
A little over three weeks ago, I had a momentary craving of normalcy as I reflected on what it meant to be newly single. I met my ex-husband as a teenager, long before social media really existed. Now, I realized, we are in a futuristic era of online dating. How the hell, I wondered, is a bald, divorced, incredibly busy physician with brain cancer living in the middle of a global pandemic supposed to find a partner? “Is the universe playing a joke on me?” I wondered. I think we have all asked ourselves many, many times if 2020 is playing a joke on us.
As if the universe heard me, a random NYT article popped up on my Facebook page. It was about a young woman with cancer who decided to make an online dating profile.. She was brave, bold, and not at all fearful of the idea of appearing non-normal in her profile. I read this article and I thought- This lady is a badass. I want to be that brave.
So, without much thought, I made an online dating profile. I had never done this in my life. I put two pictures on my profile, one of me in a brain cancer warrior shirt and another fully bald post-radiation therapy. I was not shy. I did not attempt to be normal, whatever that illusion even is. I was me, and I was proud of this me. Finally, I embraced non-normalcy and accepted myself fully and without hesitation.
Within 24 hours, I met Paul. Paul liked the brave, bold woman who did not seem to be aiming for a life of normalcy. Paul took the risk of beginning a relationship with me before we knew my post-treatment MRI results. Thank you, Paul, for quickly embracing the me that it took myself almost thirty years and a close-up encounter with mortality for me to embrace.
To all of you non-normal, quirky, unique, independent, lovely and incredible people, I hope you can embrace and love the you that you are right now. You are amazing, just as you are.
What even is “normal?” Who defines it? Many things that were “normal” pre-COVID I would argue, will never be “normal” again. In light of many overt examples of social injustice, what was once tolerated and “normal” should never be again. 2020 has shaken up everyone’s version of “normal,” which I think might turn out to be a damn good thing.
Normal, in my opinion, is so out of style. Different is in and let’s wear our differences with all of the confidence that we have.
Fondly,
Courtney
©CB2020