“The word normal sounds so abnormal coming out of your mouth,” she said.

In that very second, I got a flashback. A distant memory. But I was so involved in talking to her that I set it aside.

I thought about it after she went to sleep. She’s right. I never considered myself normal, either. I found most of normalcy boring.

What’s normal, anyway? I drown myself in reading about singularities, distance shrinking at the speed of light, relativity, and so on and so on.

As I read and think deeply, none of it makes sense. None of it ever made sense. It wasn’t supposed to make sense. That’s why I was never normal.

The memory was of my childhood. When I went to school, at lunchtime, everyone got their tiffins out. We talked to each other, ate together, had a fun time. It struck me early how it’s, quote-unquote, normal for everyone to carry tiffins. That whole idea baffled me. Not the part where we all ate together, but the fact that I had to carry something from home, sometimes even my favorite dish, then wait— and wait some more— until finally, a set time arrived and I got to eat it!?

I stopped carrying a tiffin from a young age. I was never a big fan of cold food anyway. But that memory came back when we talked about being normal.

Because normalcy has a tone to it. A repetitive, dull, tedious tone. It exists because there aren’t enough questions asked. I asked that question pretty early: “Why can’t I just eat at home and then go to school?”

And then I got hooked on abnormalities.

I’m pretty abnormal.

But normal is average. Who the fuck wants to be average? I’d rather live life under constant pressure, with the world closing in on me, than settle.

Fuck normal.