I Still Don’t Know What Normal Means

Day 243 – July 24, 2026

I keep thinking about normal. People say things like, “I just want things to feel normal again,” and I completely understand what they mean. I have said it. Probably repeatedly. But I am no longer sure normal is a real destination.

What normal? Which version? The normal before something happened? The normal after? The normal you thought you had? The normal everybody else thinks you should want?

Life keeps changing the definition. There was a time when normal meant getting up and going to work. Then normal meant surviving a day. Then normal meant sleeping more than a few hours. Then normal meant walking through my apartment without feeling on edge. Now normal is changing again.

Normal is writing. Walking Roger. Thinking about things beyond myself. Making plans. Getting excited. Having a panic attack occasionally and then continuing the day. Maybe normal is not the absence of damage. Maybe it is familiarity. This is my life now. Not in a defeated way. In a grounded one.

I know this version. I know the apartment. I know the rhythms. I know where the fear hides. I know which days are harder. I know what helps. I know who I call. I know what Roger does when he realizes I am upset and decides the appropriate clinical intervention is pressing his entire body against mine. Highly evidence based. I know more about myself than I did before.

That does not mean I prefer everything I had to learn. Some education is wildly overpriced. But I know. And knowledge changes what normal feels like. I do not wake up every morning asking why I am not the person I was before. Not anymore. That question was keeping me attached to a version of myself who cannot come back because time does not work that way.

None of us get to go backward. Even the people who have never experienced anything catastrophic are not who they were a year ago. Life keeps editing us. Some edits are gentle. Some arrive like somebody threw the manuscript down a staircase. Mine has had notes.

Still, I like parts of who I am now. That used to feel almost disloyal. As if finding anything valuable in myself after what happened somehow made what happened acceptable. It does not. I can hate what happened and like who I have become in some ways. Those are not opposing ideas.

I am stronger in places. Clearer. More protective of myself. Less willing to explain a boundary twelve times. More aware of what matters. More interested in living deliberately. Also considerably more tired of bullshit. That feels healthy.

Maybe normal is simply the place where you stop comparing your current life to an imaginary one. I am not there completely. But I am closer. I still miss things. I still wish things had gone differently. I still have moments where I want the version of myself who did not know any of this. Then I remember she also did not know what I know now.

She had not written these pages. She had not built this life. She had not discovered exactly how stubborn she could be. I love her. I do not need to become her again. I think that is different from moving on. It is moving forward. Those words get used interchangeably, but I do not think they mean the same thing.

Moving on sounds like leaving something behind. Moving forward means it can come with you. It just does not get to drive. I can live with that.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And normal apparently changing the address again.