Dear Normalcy,
I’ve longed for you for much of the year and only recently learned I don’t want you anymore. It took losing you in such a dramatic fashion with the onset of this pandemic to realize you have been bad for me this whole time.
I was scared when I lost you and my normal way of life — my routine that I felt kept me grounded. You were comfortable for me. I felt uneasy without you. With the loss of practically everything that defined my days — eating meals in the dining hall, going to in-person classes, hanging out with friends, going to the movies, hugging family — I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. This loss forced me to examine and redefine so much in a short time about my own life and the rest of the world.
Now, my days are spent mostly in comfy clothes inside my room either alone or with people virtually over Zoom. Although I haven’t been physically seeing the world much these days, I’ve “seen” a lot more in these past few months. With my regular daily life upended, I had a lot of time for self-reflection and education. Really, what else was there to do? It’s not like I could go to the movies, go to sports games, or travel.
Now, I see you for your true self. You concealed so much from me — patriarchy, whiteness, colonialism— under the façade of normality. You made me complicit in upholding harmful institutions. You made me ignorant of my privilege. You gave me a false sense that things were as they should be, that society was functioning properly.
I see how wrong that was.
We strive for you, but who’s deciding what’s normal? It’s defined by a Eurocentric, patriarchal heteronormative view. How is the exclusion of minority needs and voices right?
I have questions for you.
Why is it normal that our educations are blatantly white-washed and that tough issues are left out of the classroom?
Why is it normal for structural racism to be ingrained in every institution?
Why is it normal that politics are so divisive and party lines actually prevent people from coming together on issues that should not be objectionable by either side?
The list goes on.
We become desensitized to things that make up the normal. It has somehow become normal for people to be dying of COVID-19 every day. That should still be shocking. Yet people are resuming their lives and not following safety protocols.
We have done the same thing with school shootings, people of color being killed by police, and homelessness. We view these as normal occurrences.
Normalcy, see what you have done to us? You have desensitized us to the harsh realities present in society. You have made us complicit to their harms, and even stalled our action.
You have too strong a hold over us.
Really, everything is organized or divided by what is the norm and what isn’t: weight, competency, wealth, sexuality. This isn’t good for anyone, but don’t you see the extra damage you cause to those who don’t meet your expectations? You are a constraining force.
You have made me believe my norm is the same as everyone else’s. I’ve been self-consumed by my own situation, my own norm. You’ve shielded me from grasping my own privileges and the realities of others. While I’ve had a loving family, a warm house, nutritious meals, and really everything else I needed all my life, others haven’t.
Why should I return to you when the normal you were projecting and telling me was not really right to begin with?
Yes, I’d like to return to a world one day — hopefully in the near future — where face masks are no longer needed and we can meet people unrestricted. But that’s no reason to hand myself over to you again. I have learned a lot without you. I have grown and learned to think beyond you.
We need to break from your mold and constraints. You inhibit us from seeing problems. We need to do better and we can do better, and it starts without you.
Good Riddance,
R.