Writer's Block Magazine

At nearly 4 years old, like most children in the Netherlands, I had my first trial day of school: an afternoon to acclimatize to my new daily activities. My dad dropped me off in a classroom packed with children older than me. I was introduced to my future classmates and shyly took a seat when it was snack time. My dad had prepared a lunchbox for me with some fruit and a bottle filled with juice. Before I started eating my fruits, I took a sip from my bottle. It felt like everyone was looking in my direction, and suddenly someone started yelling at me “First you have to eat your food, and then you can have your drink!”, and the whole class started chanting and yelling along. As most children that age would have done in this situation, I started crying. I have messed up terribly, I thought. And the others all thought what they were saying was normal. That day I became a bit more aware of the social rules: the rules that were there to make me act normal, and I had to start following them like all the others so I would fit in.

We live with voices that tell us that we need to be ordinary, whilst at the same time, there are other ones yelling at us to be different. Don’t be like the other girls! You have to be original! But how does one stand out when following a group is part of ‘being normal’? How can we be ourselves without acting too differently from what is expected of us? These questions came to me throughout my own attempts to be regular. And aside from the fear of acting inappropriately and abnormally on one hand, there is the impossible issue of acting differently from others and therewith reaching an overpowering originality on the other. Our planet is inhabited by an abundance of individuals with distinctive personalities. We get taught that no one is identical, but even the ones who call themselves ‘alternative’ follow a certain prepared set of expectations as they join a subculture. People who don’t follow rules are not alone in doing so, and because being alternative is not only a fashion statement, but also a lifestyle that has become widespread, this means it has, in one way or another, become normal. 

Whenever I meet new people, I notice that I compare them to others that I have met in the past. I notice their similar behavior and similar looks regarding their styles in clothing, and sometimes even similar facial features. So even when I meet individuals who do not act like what other people would refer to as ‘normal’, they still act similarly to other people within my circle, which then makes their behavior predictable and arguably normal to me. We base our expectations on the familiarities we recognise within our own surroundings, which means we only become familiar with certain types of people from our own cultures and societies and not with others. While there are people trying to act oppositely from what is expected of them, there are others making attempts to act according to people’s expectations, and in a way, we are both failing. The first are failing because they cannot escape the social patterns of humans, and the second because they cannot figure out what is expected of them.  

From a young age I have been trying to discover and observe what it is like to ‘be normal’ and to ‘fit in’, and how I would have to act to be perceived as such. I remember when I was only 9 years old, I looked at myself in the mirror while comparing myself to a friend who was standing next to me. I vividly recall thinking: I am an alien. All because I thought I looked different. Because I thought I talked differently. Because I thought I acted differently from the children around me. That instant is also when I felt I had to start acting differently from how I had before. I did not want to feel so alienated amongst the others, so I started paying attention to people’s behavior. I had to familiarize myself more with the unspoken social rules. What made them so human that I did not have? My main sources of study were movies and television. I had a generous amount of access to this during my childhood because my father always let me watch whatever was on TV, and my mother often took me to the library where I would rent DVD’s. Throughout the years, I, consciously and subconsciously, started copying what I believed to be normal from TV shows, movies and books. It was only as I got older that I started to realize how unrealistic many of these characters actually were and I was only setting myself apart, and not necessarily in a good way, by trying to act according to these fictional standards.

When I discussed the topic of ‘normalcy’ with my friends, we came to a theme that was not unfamiliar to me. Drinking alcohol, unsurprisingly, is a habit we all picked up, not only due to the influence of peers, but also because we grow up in a society where this substance is normalized. People are more often asked why they do not drink, than they are asked why they do drink. One of my friends admitted that she was convinced it would make her more likable. I used to struggle with the idea of drinking alcohol for a very long time. The thought of losing control over myself scared me. I had worked so hard at trying to come across as normal, that I thought I would lose that human part of myself once I was under the influence. Though, once I eventually consumed the alcohol, I lost my worry and anxiety surrounding social participation. Which meant that as soon as I had moved past that first drink, I started to enjoy that social version of myself who did not constantly worry about fitting in.

My habit of absorbing televised behavior correspondingly led to excessive exposures of watching characters regularly drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and weed, and ultimately, taking (other) tranquilizing substances. Although many of these depictions were negatively portrayed, there was a large number of them where, mainly, drinking and smoking were romanticized. Even though my resistance towards alcohol used to be so strong, it faded over time as I became more used to the idea of using it myself, and it did not help that in every scene in every movie there was a glass of wine in the hands of the characters on screen. At this time, I had never smoked weed before, but if it could make me worry a bit less about everything, and if it really was as fun as it was always portrayed in movies, then why not try it? Then, I did try it, but it certainly did not make me feel better. Which made me feel abnormal again. Why couldn’t I enjoy what the others were enjoying? In retrospect, I began to realize the insanity of trying a drug solely because I thought it would make me feel and be ordinary. While analyzing these social interactions, I recognized especially the insanity of the normalization of alcohol. When you see other people under the influence, is that really what you think ‘normal’ human beings act like?

Now, the purpose of my article is not to stop everyone from consuming these types of substances, which I know I never could, but I am trying to show you that the world has an incoherent register of the word ‘normal’. Many things that are perceived as normal are not necessarily good for you, which is a nasty trap to fall into as someone who constantly strives to fit in. Sometimes we can be so easily persuaded by our surroundings, that we forget to think for ourselves. Throughout this article I have been sharing my experiences of trying to be normal, whilst struggling to find the real meaning of normal. Even the Cambridge Dictionary was not helpful in my attempt to define normalcy, as the definition for the word ‘normal’ reads as follows: ‘ordinary or usual; the same as would be expected’. And when I looked up the definition of the word ‘ordinary’ I got a similar result. So what exactly is normal? What is usual? And what is it that is expected of us? Even after years of trying to figure it out, the answers to these questions remain largely a mystery to me.

After many years, luckily, I have concluded that I am, indeed, not an alien. It mainly took maturing to realize that nearly everyone experiences the feeling that they don’t fit in and encounters the fear that they aren’t normal. It was also this gradual realization that made me wonder about the things I have done to try and be normal. The world exists of more than 8 billion souls, and it would be insane to expect that you could be completely different from these billions of people. But it would also be a ridiculous thought that everyone would behave the same, think the same, and feel the same. All those years I have spent trying to be… what? The same as certain individuals around me? The same as the characters I have seen on TV? Their normal is not always other people’s normal. The human perspectives on normalcy worldwide is so diverse, that there is no longer one certain expectation. The only normal that you can follow is the one you know for yourself. One that consists of your own comforts, but also takes into account your culture and reflections on past failures in your pursuit of feeling normal. Each of us creates our own habits and expectations based on what we are exposed to. We can all make an attempt to be normal, but given its relativity, nobody will ever be normal to everyone. 

Written by Jomma Groot

References:

normal. (2025). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/normal