Safety and solace in normalcy

Most days I really don't mind not being normal, and really it doesn't even come to mind much that I am not. Of course, defining normal is problematic when trying to look at real people. Lots of people have lousy parents, or strange relatives, or mild mental aberrations, or something in their histories that makes them technically unusual, or at least not "normal." Still, I don't get the feeling I quite fit within the single standard deviation range of normalcy set by my current grad student cohort. At least they are all quite smart, so my 'genius' IQ is pretty normal for once, and the fact that I read for pleasure is not peculiar. Nor did I score so high on the GRE as to be unusual. In fact, several of my good friends scored decidedly higher, especially in the math section, so I am not actually an outlier. [Yes, this is a good thing. People certainly do handicap themselves, and in standardized testing I most certainly do, in that I never study for them, or prepare for them ahead of time. I did take one practice test, part of it, to see if the style of their questions was the same, the night before this last one, but no more than that. Should I have scored higher, had I actually studied? Of course. But then I would again be an outlier.] Some days , though, for whatever reason, probably a certain concentration of seratonin or dopamine in my head, I find the feeling of being abnormal very decidedly unavoidable and unpleasant. I can't imagine going through life like this all the time. I suspect most people don't, because if it lasted very long, medication or suicide would be necessary. One day, or even one week would be fine, even interesting, but years would be unsurvivable. I never think, for instance, of my father, yet today I am quite aware of his existence, and of the who twisted, convoluted mess he made of our lives. It is still funny, so I am nowhere near as bad as I was as a teenager in this state, but I can't just be a grad student studying pie-in-the-sky ideals like social sustainability and poking at policies and international conflicts with tools of inquiry. [I am sure many of my fellow students have bits of their lives, too, that they forget about and put aside to make their present life possible and enjoyable, only I don't know them well enough to know.]
I always forget till nights like this just how distracting bipolar can be at the edges of depressive cycles. I can't concentrate on writing my essay exam, because while I can formulate my answers in my head, while sitting on a bench in a park, I can't keep my focus on my writing long enough to type those answers, and anything requiring looking something up seems like an insurmountable task. Nothing I can't finish tomorrow in the computer lab, where peer presence and social norms can fill in a bit for my own brain's lack, but it is frustrating that my brain cops out on me like that. And I can recall only 3 names of India's states at the moment, through the fog that was my memory. Thank goodness I overlearned everything for my policy class, so that my test this morning was drawing from deeper, more permanent memory. My typing speed is at least coming back, so maybe I am shifting out of it again. I am waiting for another few days at the opposite state, where I have all that extra energy, and learn and read extra fast, and can do practically anything I set my mind to, easily. I am not sure how I would have made it this far without those phases, though I suppose just being normal might be just as good. I do wonder if my IQ and my mood disorder are genetically linked, or if I could have had one without the other.
I wonder what I would be like, were I normal. I grew up isolated by my handicap and my religion, but had I been normal, I suppose I would have stayed in gymnastics, and probably done cheerleading. Assuming I didn't break my neck from the top of a human pyramid, I would certainly have still done choir, but without my discomfort with my hands, I would have been not just in small ensembles, but probably doing a few solos, too. And, with my dad as a lawyer, I would probably have finished law school by now, and be a new lawyer beginning my practice in Denver, renting a house with my cat, and quite possibly a boyfriend or husband. Sounds like a fun life. I imagine I would be doing criminal law, and would probably be involved in legal aide, specializing in cases involving children as victims, although I still love the logical puzzles of contracts and might dally in a bit of contract law. But I can't imagine myself as that person. She's just an imaginary Barbie doll. The real me has a crooked ex-lawyer for a dad, and keeps her mom at a distance as a fair and livable compromise between the past and present. The real me has a mood disorder that makes her extraordinarily sharp half the time and very foggily slow or tired for the rest. The real me knows that had I been born normal, my parents may have both been great, and might have stayed together, and that some part of my siblings' failings in their fight for a normal adult life have as a root the fact that I was not normal. Silly, I know, and not the whole story, sure, but it is still there. The real me can't drive, can't swim, and can only relax and enjoy bars, pubs and restaurants in my normal or manic phases. And instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and finishing off my 2 year old bottle of honey whiskey, I tend to get philosophical and analytical and wind up writing. Eventually much of what I write may help for my Great American Novel, or maybe a book on mood disorders and self-management, but it still doesn't help me learn to be more normal. Oh well. Maybe I'll get lucky and meet some new folks who can see me as odd, eclectic and interesting instead of just weird or quiet or stuck up, and there's a decent chance that I have already met such people, lots of them, given the right settings for them to actually get to know me. In the meantime, the Universe obviously still has a plan of some sort for me.[And every time I start grumbling about that the Universe is in my imagination and that there is nothing at all directional or volitional in the overall operations of the Universe, I happen to find myself in a series of minor events so unlikely that I have to regain that open mind about the whole volitional Universe thing again.] So, the Universe has its plan, and I have a quiz tomorrow, And all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

More musings on the roots of marital failure

I suppose I'll continue musing on this one for decades yet, though now that I am no longer a psychology student I doubt I will ever be writing up any formal papers on it now. (Actually, maybe not. I suppose I could always bail on environmental policy and wind up in some government agency dealing with this stuff, analyzing the extent to which government can influence the formation of healthy families, etc.) Anyway, one of the ads in the line-up during Mission Impossible III tonight is from Match.com, all about their questionnaire system. On the face of it, this system makes great sense. If I administered a 300 question personality profile to every cute single guy I meet while I am a grad student, and then ask out only those who score within a certain optimal range, assuming I know what is optimal, maybe I could guarantee I would be married by the time I finish my Masters. Maybe I would even still be happy with this guy for years afterwords. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Actually just about any guy who would let me bully him into taking a questionnaire would be already self-selected into a certain range of personalities. Maybe I need a push-over, but I think it more likely that I would just walk all over such a guy by accident. But, lets just assume for a minute that the lucky guy was just humoring me, and thus is still a reasonable match. How much do questionnaires really tell me, or anyone? How much of relationships really relies on the answers one could give to any set of questions? There is, of course, also a picture to go with each potential match on a dating site, but knowing how attractive a complete stranger is, and a bunch of static answers wouldn't be enough to add up to relationship bliss either, I think.
Being a short, handicapped woman has so far always landed me loads of really unbelievably attractive male friends, all variously single, and all people who were or still are great friends. Many of them are probably married by now, but all of them, once we became well acquainted, are not "the one." I am sure most people, or at least most of those who didn't marry young, have a host of similar friends. And, most of the men I have dated were not among those I would have ranked as particularly good-looking. Each would have had very different answers to any set of questions. This is all just part of normal single life, but yet the process of mate selection, and the dynamics of normal relationships lie at the heart of marital failure and the 'demise' of the family.
So, what exactly brought all this on? The ad for match.com said that it was easy, because match.com "does all the work." I know dating can be frustrating, but laziness seems a poor way to make it better. Forming and maintaining a relationship takes some effort, even if it is the perfect one. Once someone or something else assumes responsibility for this effort, when do the people forming the relationship resume that effort? After all, at least in the meeting new people/ first dates stages there is novelty and excitement to move things along, making it easier to put in effort. A few months or years later, when the novelty is gone, there is also no dating site to make things easier. Sure, there is a role for dating sites, but it seems so much more exciting going out and doing things, and meeting new potential partners in these activities.