Most of the time, I don’t care about being a freak. In fact, dare I say it, I revel in it and don’t mind rubbing it in others’ faces from time to time. Not often, but once in a while, just pointing out that not everybody walks down the well-trodden path is not a bad thing.
However, once in a very long while, I get a hankering to be normal. Or rather, more mainstream. It can be frustrating not to be able to talk about anything while in the company of normies. Or talking about normal things without any real knowledge of said subjects (I am very good at mimicking others).
I dream of being married with 2 kids, a dog, and a house in the ‘burbs (got the last one at least). Going to church on Sundays and then going to a fast food restaurant afterwards. Honestly, that was my favorite part of gong to church as a kid especially as we were not allowed to have fast food at any other time.
Side note: I didn’t realize until I was out of the house that my mother did not like to cook. She made us dinner, but it was very basic. I remember cow tongue once, but her staples were Indian curry and potato, rice and veggies, and other simple Taiwanese foods. They were filling, but not memorable in any way. I’m not being critical, by the way. I don’t like to cook, either, and I feel for her that she had to cook even though she didn’t enjoy it. As a kid, I was unhappy by her cooking, but later I realized what a chore it was for her and felt some empathy.
She was raised with the idea that a woman was less than a man, and that a woman’s worth was in being a wife and a mother. This despite the fact that her own mother was a highly-accomplished woman–who also pooh-poohed the lives of women. She was the first woman to attend a certain college in Japan, and she was the first woman to be a senator in the prefecture in Taiwan in which she lived. She was a powerful personality, but she also gave lip service to how much better men were than women (and left all her money to her four sons and none to her four daughters).
When my mother wanted to go on a date, her mother said she had to be engaged before she went on the date. So she got engaged to a young man before even dating him. Then, she came to America and was swept off her feet by my father and dumped her fiance through a letter. I don’t even know if she kissed him before dumping him (so were they really engaged? I guess?), but that was just the way it was back then.
My mother had set ideas about what a woman should or shouldn’t do, and it affected me as much as I was repulsed by her gender determinism. When I said that I didn’t want children (one of the hundreds of times I told her), she retorted that it didn’t matter what I wanted–it was my duty as a woman to have them. It was also my duty as a woman to get married (first) and cater to my husband’s every whim.
Before that, though, I had to go to college in part because education was important, but also because where else was I going to snag a worthwhile husband? Oh, and I had a mob of people surrounding me and praying at me because I left the church. A group from the parent church in LA, and it was deeply scarring. Roughly twenty people around me with their hands stretched out to me (they asked if they could lay hands ON me, which, just no), babbling religious shit. Some were even babbling in tongues, which really freaked me out. Trust me, this is not the way to get someone to be amenable to rejoining the church. If anything, it turned me off even more. But that’s how easy it is to be in a bubble when you surround yourself with others who are just like you.
I’m trying to imagine that life, the one in which I’m closer to normal than not. And I get somewhat idealistic about it, mooning about how great it would be. But here’s the thing. I don’t want any single component of that life–so why the hell would I want them all? I once mentioned this to K, saying that I was wistful about not having any of it. She said, “Minna, do you actually want any part of that?”, and it shook me out of my dreamworld.
Yes, it may sound good in the hypothetical, but it certainly would not work out that way in reality. In fact, it didn’t sound that great in practice, either, honestly. I don’t want to get married or have kids (or date someone with small kids in this time of my life). I have no desire to go to church and especially not to be a Christian. Whatever spirituality I have is hard-won and private, which is how I think it should be for everyone.
The reality is that even though I get self-conscious about being a weirdo sometimes, there is no way I would want to live the normal life. I love it that I don’t have kids and that I don’t have to account to any partner. My time is my own and no one else’s, which is exactly how I like it. There are going to be times when it rankles, yes, but those are few and far between.
I would like to get out and meet more people, but it’s not an imperative that is pushing me to act. Quite frankly, I like better that I can just sit on my couch and do whatever the hell I want at home. That may change in a year or so once I’m fully acclimated to being alive again, but if so, I’ll deal with it then. For now, I’m fine the way I am.