So what is normal?

I did Maths to A-Level (yes I know that is surprising, even more that I passed since I am hopeless at basic arithmetic) and sad person that I am I got excited to learn a definition of ‘normal’. It is a line in geometry which is (IIRC) perpendicular to the tangent of a curve. 

My quirky mind loved the idea that normal can be defined – and have nothing to do with the matter at hand! As someone who had always felt, or was made to feel, abnormal, a misfit, this was an idea to hug to myself.

I find myself once again wondering about normals.  I have got used to being depressed, and what effect that has on aspects of my life, my anxiety in certain situations, my fears.  But am I attributing to the depression things that are simply normal bumps in life? I have spoken with some colleagues about my guilt over visiting anxieties, only to find I am not alone. Others also feel nervous and awkward in a range of the situations we find ourselves in as clergy.

Have I got so used to the idea that what I feel is a result of the depression filter that I have a distorted view of what is normal? Do I have a rose tinted glasses view of normality? What if  feeling what I do is actually normal but I have forgotten how to recognise it?

In which case am I just being lazy and a whinger after all?

And off I go tying my brain in knots, just as Gabi wandering on the long field lead can do laps round the tree trunk and then wonders why she is stuck!

When your normal isn’t and doesn’t need to be

When I did my local research in the area I found that some of the villages I work in had TV before water pipes to the homes.  That stopped me in my tracks, it didn’t fit that history book version of development, surely in 1960’s Britain it wasn’t normal to go and gather water from the village well? But it was normal here.

I have got used to my version of normal life – that includes low moods, fatigue and general sleepiness. It is just what being me is like, my normal even if different to yours.  But what if it doesn’t have to stay that way? What if I can change my normal – just as the village changed theirs when the water pipes reached them?

For years before I crashed and came under the doctors for my depression I lived with it in a coping, adapting, this is my normal so just have to get on with it attitude. On one level fine, but it was as if the pipes went past me but I didn’t tap into the running waters that could have given me a better quality of normal.

I think I may have been doing the same thing again.  I discuss my depression with the doctor, but never think to comment on my level of sleepiness.  It can be linked to depression, but also could be the old Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – which doctors have had little to offer and because I can cope and adapt, then don’t make a fuss.  Also it sounds like I am simply lazy so its something I haven’t discussed with anyone.

But it turns out that there is something known as Excessive Daytime Sleepiness – and there are ways to challenge it.  So maybe my normal doesn’t need to stay the norm?

I don’t fall asleep all the time – but I do feel that I spend all my time trying to be awake enough. I can know what I want to do and write etc but it takes forever to boot up my brain to do it even if simple and short tasks. Then curl up for recharge afterwards.    I have decided to discuss this with the doctor – maybe this is just my normal and I will continue to work around it, but what if another version of normal could be only a few honesty steps away?