aiming at normalcy

Sometimes, my earlier, more feral self comes out. Usually, I keep it under control. Like last night, when at least I just stared when yet another person said "Gee, it seems to me that we *all* grew up in dysfunctional families." This seems like a popular thing to say these days, and I'm never sure how to respond. I never know whether this means "this is too painful to think about, so let's stop talking about it now" or "My mother yelled at me once, so I know how it is" or "I have deep dark secrets too."

I recently read about an autistic person who comes across as normal because he's learned that people without his disease make direct eye contact with each other, so he's trained himself to do the same. I feel that I am navigating the same shoals of normalcy, usually striking rock and hoping no one else hears the scraping sounds. Or that maybe I can make up someday for yet another transgression by being kind.

Perhaps I shouldn't have bookended my week with a visit from my mother, about whom I have such mixed emotions, one weekend, followed by consuming another Augusten Burroughs book the next. Things are bound to get stirred up.

But for the record, I really wanted to respond "well, until you see your step-father pick up your little sister over his head and throw her down the stairs (well, only a couple, really, but those stairs were uncarpeted), until your mother, who's been staring at the proceedings says that she didn't see anything, YOU try telling me that we all came from a dysfunctional family. Until you see gallons of alcohol consumed in the course of a week, week after week, and you know you're not witnessing all the consumption that's happening, until you hear screaming, survival screaming every night, until you feel that the streets of the inner city are safer than your own house, until you have to struggle to train yourself to sit in your own living room and feel comfortable and safe, until your husband expresses amazement that you can function in the world, just try telling me that we're all coming from dysfunctional families. Somehow, I'm not buying it."

But that kind of response would be shocking, a conversation stopper, insensitive to others' pain. See what I mean about scraping on rocks? Right now, the sound echoes through my head but at least last night, I was the only one who heard.