Normal?
I may have the best job ever. Sure, the family I work for never has any decent junk food in their house and, as a nanny, it is inevitable that at least once a day I will get pooped or thrown up on, but in exchange for the bodily fluids and having to take on the task of making sure the 4-year-old doesn’t punch the 1-and-a half-year-old in the face over a toy car, I get the best therapy sessions from my boss.
Every time we talk, I leave their house with an aha moment. In the past few months, I’ve tackled everything from abusive relationships (it’s really easy to say you’d leave one, until you actually faced with the situation) to dreams where I’m being forced to marry my dad (“Ok, that’s weird, but perfectly normal”).
This time it came before they even left the house for the party they were set to attend. For the past few weeks, I’ve been dating a new guy who is gorgeous, thinks I’m gorgeous, cooks for me, and is amazing in the sack. As per our routine, after each date, my boss, married and stuck at home with three kids under the age of four every day, likes to inquire how it went in an attempt to “live vicariously” through me, as she puts it.
I told her that my date the night before went great! He cooked me an amazing dinner and we ate under the stars on a table he had set up in his Christmas light strung backyard. After, we played Wii golf and had better than average sex. I only had one complaint- he kisses me too much. It weirded me out and I felt like something was off. She laughed and agreed that if early on I already liked him less than he liked me, there might be a problem down the road. I insisted that wasn’t the case. I was just worried that if he liked me that much, maybe it was because he secretly wanted to cut out my organs while I’m sleeping and sell them on the black market.
But as I sat on the couch rocking the baby to sleep, it dawned on me what was really bugging me. I’m not used to being treated so nicely. Don’t get me wrong, my ex had many moments of niceness. But my ex was admittedly bipolar, refused to take medication, and those moments were usually spurred by periods of mania where he’d take me down to the beach, profess his undying love, and tell me he wanted to travel the world with me and name our future daughter after a Hawaiian stone carver he’d apprenticed for. Two weeks later, though, he’d be back to insisting I’d forced him into the relationship, which was why I was a slut and he hated me.
When I explained this to my boss and she nodded knowingly, reminding me she had been a social worker on Skid Row for years before her current stint as a Bel Air housewife, she pointed out that that was pretty typical of a manic depressive. Pretty typical indeed. But what really made me think is how fucked up it is that we, girls and guys alike, get so used to our shitty relationships that, not only do we stay in them even though they make us miserable, but we forget that it’s not normal to hate the one you love.
Normal is not throwing an empty glass at the wall because you really want to throw it at your ex, but you don’t want to catch a case. Normal is not telling one another you love each other one day then refusing to talk to each other the next.
Normal is bringing over a case of PBR to go with the dinner your date just spent two hours cooking for you. Normal is when he lets you insist you won at Wii golf even though you ended up losing your ball over the edge of a cliff not once, but twice. And normal is kissing- a lot. And not because you had an intense fight and you’re following it up with makeup sex because you’re both too fucked up to figure out any other way of handling your issues with each other. It’s kissing because you actually like each other.
And normal is remembering that normal is not an indication that something’s off. It’s just- normal.
