I thought for a while in my mid-twenties that I wanted to be normal. This was surprising, not least to myself, because I had spent the first twenty-five years of my life actively resisting that label. Suddenly, I had all these urges – to be a homeowner, to post regularly on Instagram, to start buying clothes exclusively from & Other Stories, and (god forbid) to have a boyfriend, one just as shiny and normal as the self I was creating in my minds’ eye.
I had shunned normality for so long – not in any extreme way, as I never joined a cult or got elaborate tattoos emblazoned on my torso or became obsessed with anime. But I refused the usual mantle of ordinary young girl. I didn’t have social media, hung around with people who regularly played Dungeons and Dragons, and let myself be consumed by my passion for mid-twentieth century late modernist literature.
I was not ashamed to be surprising. And sometimes I forgot that my interests and disposition could be considered unexpected to some people. The more I look back, the weirder I become to myself. Why did I only eat Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference fishcakes for the entire first year of university, I sometimes ask myself. And why did I decide only to wear grey vest tops in 2018? These are questions, the answers to which may elude me forever.
I continued in this way for twenty-five years, quite happily too. I knew it was better not to be normal – my mother told me so. I didn’t understand what normal people did, and when I observed them living their lives, I felt no desire to understand either. I prided myself on people saying to me, ‘you know, the more I get to know you, the less I understand you’. Like an onion, I had many layers. All of them slightly tougher and bitter to swallow than the last.
One day, I realised that I wanted a slice of this normality. It was as though someone had pulled the duvet cover from my naked body whilst I was still half asleep. I blame my ovaries. They really have a mind of their own. I witnessed people doing the big shop on a Sunday with the person they love (or say they do, anyway) and I wanted a slice of that pie. I saw people with office jobs in Holborn frequenting All Bar One on a Thursday night, and that scenario no longer terrified me.
Why is it that my ovaries wanted so badly to be in All Bar One on a Thursday night? It can’t have been the amazing deals they have on long island iced teas. It must have been something to do with the men in there. That was it, I wanted a man. And the sort of man who frequented All Bar One on a Thursday night. Well, maybe not the All Bar One in Holborn; perhaps the one in Canary Wharf. Even my ovaries have standards.
This rude awakening was accompanied by the crashing realisation that I had never really laid the groundwork for a normal life. It was too late to join Instagram. It was too late to tear down my shrine to early-70s Bob Dylan. It was too late to find less weird friends. How the hell would I ever convince that six-foot Clifford Chance lawyer drinking an Old Fashioned over there, that I was the woman for him? I still bought my winter coats in the sale at TK Maxx.
I spent a few months scrabbling around, trying to fit in with the people at work. I spoke about normal things. I edited my Bumble bio to omit anything that might make me appear less than one hundred percent sane. I referenced Married at First Sight Australia on numerous occasions, and when people bought up Taylor Swift’s new album, I nodded along in agreement. I wasn’t trying to be a fake. I was trying to appease these new urges inside of me, egged on (if you’ll pardon the pun) by my ovaries that had gone into overdrive by this point.
Then I went on some dates with normal people. I spoke about the merits of north London as opposed to south. I said I liked cocktails, even though I find them to be pointless concoctions, and I pretended not to be disgusted by the emergence of ChatGPT. And you know what? I began to see that normality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sixteen-year-old me already knew that, but twenty-five-year-old me had to be told twice.
These men, some of whom might have offered me a leg up into the normal life I thought I ought to be leading, others of which would probably just sleep with me and never call me back, were supposed to be my portal to a suburban existence in zone 5. However, all they really ended up being were dry conversations on dead-end dates that I wanted to end as quickly as possible. And I saw that normality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. My second rude awakening of my twenty-fifth year.
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