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.