Normal

‘You are not normal,’ you tell me

‘I am normal’ I reply, thinking: I am not normal

I have stumbled through life vaguely, in parallel to normality and to conventional rules, never quite rebelling in an interesting life-defining way.

Not in the way that would make friends and acquaintances remark, at dinner parties, in sometimes-but-not-always-approving tones, at my acts of outlandish defiance.

But more in an unwitting, uncomfortable way: like a jumper put on back to front that doesn’t quite fit, not realising immediately that the neck is too high and the arm holes are in the wrong place, and that I have been caught in public, ashamed that I went out that way, and didn’t notice until it was way too late in the day to change.