Allergic to Normalcy
After almost twenty one years of living on this planet, I’ve finally come to the realization that I am allergic to any sort of normal life. The End. Period. But, for the sake of comprehension, let me back up a minute. See, the reason why I feel the need to say this now is a complicated mixture of things, starting with the fact that in the past week, I have skipped two Spanish classes, one expository writing class, and have left early from my philosophy class twice. The reason for my skipping class is also a complicated concoction of reasons. These reasons include the fact that I’m either allergic to half the foods that I enjoy most, i.e. anything with refined sugar, flour, or gluten, or I have diabetes which would suck even worse. The reasons for my absences also include the fact that every now and then I wake up and I just don’t give a shit, which is a direct result of opening my eyes every morning to my mother’s guitar sitting in the corner of my room, but no matter how hard I look, I never find the mother that’s supposed to go along with it. Also, when it rains, I could really give a shit, because adding to my lack of normalcy is the fact that my moods are controlled at least 75% by the weather. Mix in a severe food allergy of some sort with a depression induced “I don’t give a shit” attitude and you’ve got a lot of missed classes. But hey, the missed classes are just tiny pieces of why I feel like I am allergic to any sort of normal life.
Let’s go back to the food allergy thing for a minute. My entire life I have been addicted to junk food. I love it. Sugar and fat are the yin and yang of my world. But lately, I haven’t been feeling too great after eating junk food. Regardless, I always crave more, so I always eat more, despite the fact that I’ve gained, oh, about fifteen pounds this winter. Anyway, like I said, I haven’t been feeling too peachy after eating these sugary, crappy foods. I get headaches all the time. I’m always tired, no matter how much sleep I get. I feel dizzy and weak a lot o f the time. And I am never, ever in a good mood anymore. Then two weeks ago, my digestive system starts completely malfunctioning. So I go to the doctor. She tells me to drink a lot of water. My insurance company paid god knows how much for some broad to tell me to drink a lot of water. Now, hydration may be part of the problem, it’s true, but the main problem is that about 90% of the time I feel like at any moment one of those creatures from Alien is going to burst through my stomach. No, I’m sorry doc, but lack of hydration is simply not the answer. I want a second opinion from someone who’s not a moron.
So I tell all this information to my fiancé and he says, comfortingly, “maybe its diabetes”. Awesome. I have a family history of diabetes so that’s very plausible, except for the fact that I haven’t been losing any weight. A week later I still don’t know anything aside from the fact that I still feel like crap, so I go to the doctor again. Then she tells me to go get blood tests and hands me a pamphlet about the importance of fiber in my daily diet. I shred the pamphlet and I plan to I go get blood tests. I have to fast for twelve hours so that some nurse in a bad mood can strangle my arm in a tourniquet and drain more blood from my body than I personally believe I have to give. And all this for a woman who went to eight years of medical school to be able to figure out whether I have a food allergy, diabetes, or just a really large parasite living in my stomach. Brilliant. Its been weeks since all this craziness began, and I still don’t know shit. All I know is that I have had to cut out anything from my diet that doesn’t grow on a tree or on a bird’s chest. And after 20 years of eating nothing but sugar, the withdrawal is not treating me well. It’s getting to the point where I’d just about stab someone for a piece of chocolate.
If this doesn’t make me sound abnormal enough, let’s rewind to Monday. I wake up, get dressed, drive to school, get to Literature, and we begin our discussion on Oedipus. I can tell by the overwhelming silence of the classroom that I am one of the only people in the room who reads Greek tragedies not simply for class, but in my spare time. I mean, really, what better way is there to unwind after class than kicking back and reading Medea? Anyway, there were are in class, I raise my hand to answer a question, positive that I have the perfect answer, and I get the response “Mmmmm, kind oofff, but not really”. “Kind of but not really.” “My God”, I think to myself. “It’s happening…I’m actually getting dumber”. This may sound like an overreaction, but let me tell you something. I am not that smart and I am not a good student. I’ve always wanted to be, but have never had the patience for the conveyer belt monotony of it all. But my mother went to Cornell, her brother went to Cornell. Two of my cousins went to other Ivy League schools, and my other cousin who is literally a genius graduated high school at sixteen, moved to France, then moved to New Zealand, then went on to NYU with whom she is currently studying abroad in Ghana. However, she will no longer be attending NYU in the fall because she wants more of a “life challenge”. What, because NYU isn’t challenge enough on its own? I mean Jesus Christ. Basically what I’m trying to say here is…I’m not the brightest bulb in the box. I’m the black sheep of the family, and nobody really expects anything from me. But English…now there’s something I get. The English category is pretty much the only thing I’m good at and the only thing I really care about academically. But having my favorite professor telling me “Kind of but not really”, well, he may as well draw a big red capitalized “FAIL” on my forehead and shove me in the corner of the room with a giant cone on my head.
So, I can’t even comprehend the English language now. Great. There’s only one thing to do in this situation: cry. That’s right, I started crying in the middle of a discussion about a man who accidentally kills his father and makes babies with his mom. Nobody really notices, of course. I’ve gotten good at hiding my emotions over the years. But still, there I sit, my eyes welling up in the middle of Lit class. Well, it didn’t matter anyway, because after that class I was out of there. I had yet another a doctor’s appointment to go to on the other side of the island, so it’s not like I would be returning to class for another chance at a random sob-fest. But see there it is again. My sheer weirdness. My inability to exist on the same plane as everyone else around me. Who does that? Who starts crying in the middle of class because she missed one question? Me, just me. Because I was born in the form of nature’s practical joke.
I really think sometimes I was created when Mother Nature was drunk or something. And speaking of drunk, I can’t help but interrupt this essay to wonder if my food allergy or diabetes or black plague or whatever it is I have effect my ability to get drunk? That would suck because on the rare occasions when I do act like a normal twenty something and decide to get a little crazy with one Bud Light, it’s pretty much the only time I feel like maybe I am normal. Maybe I have the ability to be just like everybody else. Then I sober up and have a horrible hangover, and I don’t drink again for a month because I realize that one night of acting like a twenty year old, care free, idiot is not worth the migraine and/ or nausea.
But seriously, what is my mental damage? I mean, all these thoughts and feelings and all this self doubt. The constant whirring of the wheels in my head. The places my mind goes when I should be in class. None of this can be normal. I am allergic to normal. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be normal. I wonder because I do things such as the aforementioned and things like accusing my fiancé of cheating on me, even though that is nearly physically impossible because he spends every moment he is not at school or at work with me. He is completely devoted to me. He is 100% wonderful, but no matter what, I find a way to make him look like an asshole. Why? Because that’s my job. I’m pretty sure that I was put on this planet to annoy and weird people out. I do things like complaining about my weight one minute and then grabbing a doughnut the next. I always talk about how much I want to be a great student, but then I never do my homework. I talk about how adult and responsible I want to be, but, I don’t even have a job right now. I wake up late everyday. I speed even though I got a speeding ticket in August. I need sleep, but then I stay up on the computer till 4 a.m. I smoke pot when I want to be on a diet. When I want to make friends I clam up. When it’s a beautiful day, I lock myself inside to read a book. When it’s rainy I complain that I want to be outside. When I tell my father I want to be closer to him I don’t talk to him for weeks at a time. And I want to finally improve my life and change things for the better…I just turn around and screw things up again. I give up. I get lazy. I can’t. I won’t. I just don’t give a shit.
I am a living contradiction and I hate it. It would seem with all the medications and therapy and self-help books, that there must be some way to stop this never-ending circle. But I don’t know if there is. The philosopher Sartre had a theory that everything that happens in your life and even in other people’s lives is free-will. It’s all choice, and all things, good or bad, are things that you must take responsibility for. Well, I don’t know if Sartre is correct, but if he is, in his world I would be screwed. But, on the other hand, philosopher John Hospers had a theory that everything you do in your life, every decision you make, everything you do, everything you don’t, and everything you are capable of and everything you aren’t is all determined by luck. There is little free will. Some people are lucky, and some are not. Some kids are raised in a perfect household, they go to a good school, they were blessed with an active personality with a “never give up” attitude. Some kids…aren’t. Some kids’ mothers die. Some kids fuck up in school because they’re depressed and don’t have the willpower or energy to deal with life. Some kids are lazy. And some kids are just too tired to not give up. So, I could theorize my life and personality the John Hospers way. None of these quirks or fuck ups are entirely my fault. It’s all just luck. It’s just how I am and there’s nothing I can do about it. But if I live with that kind of attitude, then what? Do I settle with all the things I hate about myself and that’s it? Do I never strive for better? Am I doomed for the rest of my life to be an abnormal, introverted, mess of life just because some fucked up things happened to me? I really don’t want it to be that way. I want to be better, and I want my life to be happy and filled with good things. But, if I choose to live that way that means I’m responsible for all the bad things in my life too. And I’m just not sure I’m ready to handle that.