Ep.48: F**k normal

This week I’ve been snagged by the word ‘normal’, kind of a dull, grey, word at best. Normal doesn’t sound like she’d stay out all night, doing drugs and shagging random strangers, no, Normal sounds more like she'd curl up with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (probably a custard cream). Normal is a bit more Norma Jean than Marilyn.

I’ve been snagged by Normal because an obsession with her absence is all around us just now. Covid has sent her packing and now everyone is looking for her, talking about how and when we might get her back, she’s a holy grail, an island paradise where everything is shiny and warm and right and azure seas gently lap golden sands. Because that's all normal of course.

And the lack of normal has birthed (if I dare squeeze two loathed phrases into the one sentence) a ‘new’ normal. 

But while Covid crusaders may yet see that day we return to a normal way of being, for us cancer crusaders it’s not so clear what we are seeking to return to.  You can never be back to who you were before cancer because you are utterly changed. Who you were before disappears, like a land at the top of the Faraway Tree, it’s moved out of reach to be replaced by an emotional minefield riddled with cancerous potholes. 

I do get why normal seems to be a handy concept to peg your ‘recovery’ to (ah ‘recovery’, I’m liking that word less and less too but I’ll pocket it for another rant on another day and don’t get me started on the phrase ‘recovery journey’, bleuchhhh!), but I’ve no idea what my personal normal is anymore and I have a sneaky suspicion that when people say normal they mean their normal, not mine.

My normal raises eyebrows.  My normal is not what people mean when they ask if life is ‘getting back to normal’.

My normal does not involve gentle exercise; my normal doesn’t really involve learning to be kind to yourself; my normal doesn’t involve putting your feet up or resting much; 'self-love', whatever the feck that means, doesn't really come into it.  So when I watch beating-breast cancer videos, carefully constructed by professionally un-scary, deeply caring, soft-voiced staff, I almost have to look behind me to see who they’re talking to. Because it’s not me. I want to spool ahead to get to my bit, the bit for people like me, but I always run out of video (or let’s be honest, fall asleep, listening to the soothing purr of the breast cancer nurse’s voice).

So I’ve realised I don’t much want to get back to normal, because I wasn’t very normal in the first place, I want to get back to being a bit weird, preferably a lot weird. Most people think it’s a bit weird to start my day by wriggling into my very lovely, new - cue excited squeak - wetsuit then head down the hill through the ice and snow for a swim in the Loch. That’s apparently nuts, yes but it’s my nuts, thank you very much.  Badminton, pilates, cycling, walking, climbing, singing, hotsmoking fish, baking, cooking curries that take all day (why not just buy it ready made? because this is my abnormal so back off). If anything, cancer has made me want to be more abnormal than ever. I want more of life than I ever got before. I want to add to the list of stuff I love and I want a body that will come with me on this one.

That is all I ask.

I want to continue to be a bit weird, nuts, bonkers, abnormal, call it whatever you want, because that’s how I was before cancer and even if I can’t be exactly who I was before cancer, I’ve got a sneaky suspicion, if I put my mind to it, I can be even more abnormal than before.