"Why can't you be normal?" was something I heard far too often until I was about 18. By which point I'd given up on "normal" and decided that whatever I was, I was. But I didn't express that anti-norm the way I was expected to (tattoos, piercings, hair styles, clothing choices, etc.), so the "anti-norms" found me too normal.

What i s typical for us in any one stage of life cannot be typical of us for every stage of life in every situataion. That sort of rigidity doens't allow for good survival, IMO. So.... No idea what I'm saying, except.... If I'm not what anyone expects, that's more about their expectations than my failings or successes.

My hubby sometimes is told that his wife is (fill in blank) and finds it strange that I am seen as the 'atypical' one.

So who the heck knows?
Not this puma.

I am a planner and I like to know as much as possible what to expect.

From all you went through Arf it's no wonder you want to know what's around the corner

Life can really suck at times.... Big hug... xo

amen, reverend puma, i say unto thee, amen. i wonder if it was my son's funeral that caused me to lose my religion. . . dunno. . . just wondering. . . don't care to do the research.

thank you, suncloud. it was/is, indeed, a serious mind and heart ripper. our little ship of fools has stabilized, considerably, but our confidence of what the morrow may bring still shivers the timbers on a routine (normal?) basis. we still don't even know what to call our family. a grand family? foster family? the freakazoid tribe?

stepping small, praying big and letting god lead the dance.

Because of how my childhood was, I wanted to be my own person but I was teased and called odd names by other people (kids and adults) because they did not consider me "normal" like them. My feelings were often hurt because of the names and the way other people thought about me.

I am so sorry for all the things that happened to you.

Hugs

One of the most twisted factors in my upbringing in a dysfunctional family was the constant effort to appear on the outside to be "normal" while being violently mentally ill on the part of both parents' behavior n the inside. The family was a missionary business overseas, which laid financial motivation to mere social motivation as a burden to shoulder so as to appear to be "normal." Like their friend and colleague PTL's Jim Bakker, my parents lived from ministerial fund raising. Our family literally performed on stage for money at missionary conventions and church venues, and as a child I performed weekly on a radio program.

The tension between the external appearance of normalcy and the internal mentally ill violent chaos was a constant traumatic stress for our family. Once in a while it snapped, but as when my dad beat my mom so badly she was admitted to a South American hospital ER on the mission field. When we as a family went to visit my mom at her hospital bed, she snapped in turn and knocked my dad down to the floor with a violent attack right there in the hospital.

MOst of the time, though, they kept a lid on letting the weekly violence in the home boil over into the view of outsiders. Not forever, though. Eventually it all boiled over when my parents led a megachurch with 3,000 members in Peru. They were arrested and deported, and that was the end of their ministry like it was for their friend Jim Bakker's when his PTL ministry imploded.

It's cathartic for me to vent about it here every time I recall it all. But beyond the good it does me, I repeat it here for the sake of any other members who may be living with a covered up abusive situation. THere's hope the truth will come out. You are not alone.

thank you, winter. i'm sorry for all that happened to you, as well.

muji,
amen to the cathartic value of venting honestly within the peer support network. a secret that is told is a truth let out of jail.

I like what Leo said " if im not what anyone expects, that's more about their expectations than my failings or successes."

Arfie, I emphasize with you and finding a normal that feels comfortable to you. I can relate that I haven't found that sense of normal but I have had found comfort in routine and punching stuff at muay tai. (Of which I couldn't go today because my car is broken :()

yes, leo is an especially eloquent preacher in the church of anti-norm and, on a global scale, many, many of the tenants of that church are still valid to my newly tortured brain, but the series of unfortunate events which formed my freak family 3.5 years ago knocked me so far out of the loop that thinking on a global scale is somewhere between difficult and impossible to me just now. add in the global shutdown where the early development of that family happened in government mandated isolation and? ? ? what planet am i on?

during my most intense participation in the church of anti-norm, i still believed in "normal for me." given the extreme instability of my childhood, finding and developing a normal for me was critical for my own strictly personals. in the chaotic advent of my second parenting career, i feel it is newly critical for all 5 members of the new family.

again, i ask my fellow anti-norms. . . can you give me a more acceptable word for ^it^? are the church principles really more important than steering a steady course for the 5 heavily traumatized members of my little ship of fools? i don't have the mental bandwidth for precision verbage just now. what will get you off my back?