Well, it's not a silly question, but does lend as Andrew notes to revealing
answers, so this is just my two cents.

Yes, I have sometimes worried about this a great deal, and I say sometimes
in the sense that there have been several periods in my life, for extended
periods of time, when I have wondered this.

My experience has been different
than Andrew's for when young I was always trying to be 'normal' to begin where
it seemed to me most ordinary people began and I felt it as a great lack in
myself.

On the other hand, I do understand what he means
about having an ordinary life as a mask to allow for one's creative work, since
I've done that for periods of considerable time, but I don't believe that one
anymore. It is a _productive_ view, a combining of comfort in one's
existence with a sense that it leads to productive work, worthwhile work. And
that's ok, to a point, but it's just the issue of success or work like selling shoes
or making cabinets.

The whole point in life is to live, and as one is, whatever that is. And while
various masks or identities or circumstances may be beneficial, there's often a
point where the mask didn't fit the living face anymore: when the ordinary
reality has to change in some significant way or even shattered to allow those
inner realities to live. Whenever that happened, and it's only been several
periods of time in my life, that those pressures within and without intersected, I
would start wondering if I were normal? And part of that was the effects, the
exhaustion, the disorientations, but most of it was that fixed identity looking
upon all those other living realities and wanting them to remain marginal,
contained, and since they couldn't be the way they had been, and so judging
them, by turning to the question of judgement and assessment, am I normal?

It's just
impossible I think for one's 'self' or 'soul' whatever that thing within is to live on
the margins of one's existence, to be contained within identity, and to be let out
for the occasional romp in life, whether it's a suspension of identity in drinking
or in writing or dancing in the dark.  It just basically wants to live, and for
whatever reason, childhood, terrifying family lives, cultural upbringing, many
souls are not allowed ground to stand on or air to breathe, they negotiate for
small freedoms, treats, rewards, they contain themselves within relationships
and hush to sleep their own burning thoughts or hush their own perceptions
that trembling and transient as they are question and see the realities one lives
with and wishes to be blind to, or forget, or minimize, they learn to mirror the
aggressiveness they face, they take on menial jobs to learn how the world
works, they are plants eking out existence on a few drops of water a day, they
are often too 'good' and accomodating, they are allowed the small thrills of
various small thefts whose giddiness evaporates, they work and work, they take
on the masks of various identities that others want from them and they become
more phantom like and ghostly silences staring into space. This is really
normalizing the abnormal.

It's not so much that the soul or self is abnormal but
that it's been convinced it is, and the judge is in one's own head,  and souls can
lie dormant for years, being comfortable in their cages, happy for the few days
out, but they never die and always come back, often in later life where they've
become more unruly, disorienting, adolescent for lack of sunlight and exercise
and air. So there are times when this happens, when whatever lives in oneself
won't lie quietly anymore and so begins to exert these various pressures and
one feels 'mad' or wonders at one's normality.

Afterwards, when these other realities were more integrated,  the question
wouldn't even come up.  Also there's I think a kind of 'normalizing of
the abnormal' that occurs, accepting various situations, treatments, lacks,
'normal' and excusing them, justifying them, as when one grows up in a
terrifyingly abnormal house and must for survival purposes somehow accept it
or work within it, finding a sort of survival labyrinth through and out.  As a
result one's own normality, these various realities that are vital and fine being
who one is, can come to seem 'abnormal,' being banished or marginalized or
contained from an early age, though they never die, and in later life come back,
still wanting to live, and seeming 'abnormal' and making one wonder if one is
normal?  Something like this by the Jungian psychologist Estes

Trying to be good, orderly, and compliant in the face of inner or outer peril or in
order to hide a critical psychic or real life situation de-souls a woman. It cuts
her off from knowing; it cuts her from her ability to act. Like the child in the tale
who does not object out loud, who tries to hide her starvation, who tries to
make it seem as though nothing is burning in her, modern women have the
same disorder, normalizing the abnormal. So then weirdly to be normal, to
accept one's own living realities, is to accept the abnormal into oneself.

 This happens to men too, of course. But I guess my basic point is that I view
asking this question about whether I'm 'normal' now as an indication that my
identity doesn't want to accept or come to terms with various realities that are
alive in me and so prefers to condemn or judge them or dismiss them as 'crazy'
or turn it into an issue of who am I anyway? am I normal? Just a big runaround
to avoid them, for to me now the real question is what reality so wants to live in
me that I'd rather think about whether I'm normal or not in order to avoid it? For
most of the time whatever's clamouring at the door that one would rather go
crazy or turn to ruminations of am I normal? than face are not so bad, just living
bits of soul, nothing so terrible but thinking makes it so, and thinking can
change, and often must.

Best,

Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 14:37:06 +1100
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Larkin and bad poets
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Silly question maybe, but does anyone here worry if they're "normal"?
>
>A
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com