When Ordinary Is Enough

I think in everyone’s mind we have this idea of what ordinary is and it is a little different to each person. People find certain jobs to be ordinary like maybe a school teacher or a waitress at that diner in town. People find certain clothes to be ordinary based off of the brand or when girls wear typical pastel colors. That Pumpkin Spice Starbucks order that always gets made fun of may be seen as basic. Ordinary is always put down as if it is nothing to be proud of or there is nothing special about you as a person because of these ordinary things that define you. You aren’t jumping out of planes or tank diving with a bunch of sharks. Your parents may be ordinary and the biggest problem in your life may have been that one time your parents didn’t talk for a week. That is okay. It is okay to live a life with little struggle or pain. It is okay to have the typical football boyfriend and cheerleader girlfriend.

I would give anything to feel ordinary. I try to be ordinary and hide the pain that I have endured in my 21 years of life. It started with the towns “crazy” mom or some may looked at her and saw a witch. A person with grey hair who hadn’t brushed it in months and found starving herself to be something the voices in her head were forcing her to do. Talking to empty chairs and threatening to kill us was an everyday engagement. I came home to chop up clothes and pictures or afternoons where the food was all thrown out of the house. I found out as an 8th grader that I had arthritis which ended up with me going to the hospital three times a week because I was lucky enough to qualify for a whole new study. Maintaining pain like that as an 8th grader is hard to comprehend. Then I failed at attempting to take the plunge into suicide and ended up in a strait jacket in the back of an ambulance with two hot male nurses staring at me. That summer consisted of strip searches, drugs (lots of them), SpongeBob was the only thing allowed on TV, and random mental breakdowns from other people that ended with them getting stabbed with a needle. Then there were the heartbreaks, the cheaters, the guys that failed time and time again to make an effort to stay in my life. There were the drunken ones who would pin me up against a tree and strangle me, the ones that came over with another woman’s perfume on their skin, the ones that just left without reason, and the ones that thought they understood me but had only scrapped the surface. Then there was more pain; things that to this day I can’t confront even on a piece of paper for my eyes only to see. Pain so awful that the thought of it brings me back to reliving the scenes and my stomach goes into knots and my chest starts to throb.

I have tried time and time again to feel normal. I have allowed guys to think I am just another dumb pretty face that is going to make an excellent housewife (nothing against that lifestyle). I have ignored and pushed guys away that have tried to dig deep into my soul. The jokes on them though because my soul consists of a black continuous hole that never ends. I have given guys hope for a future and when that future comes and it starts caving in on me, I have burst through and ended up on top and them left behind. I have hid the things that keep me awake at night for months upon months from guys and all they think is that I am a quiet but funny girl who goes to school and is average in appearance with a knack for making pretty damn good cookies. I have tried to come off as the girl who is fine with Netflix and chill. I have kept it all in because of the past. I am scared to not be ordinary. I recently told a guy a lot of information about myself after months of our friendship and I watched as his eyes suddenly changed for me. I was no longer this fun girl that was down for just about anything, I was this girl that was messed up in the head, who may seem a little vulnerable or unbalanced. Immediately I wished I could take it all back. I wished I could just go back to him thinking of me as this unflawed human with a little bit of mystery to her. Things have changed for us since then, he used to invite me to parties and we would end up making out on a couch in front of everyone. He would stay up late texting me and when I went away for a month in Europe he was at my door step a few days after I got home. He didn’t see all the awful things in me. Now, he’s in my secret society and I am afraid I will learn to lean on him. I am afraid I will open up more to him and I will say just one wrong thing and be pushed away forever. I am like that stray cat no one really wants but people feed from a distance. For years I have trained myself to not let people in, I have put trust in a few, and have lived my oh so ordinary life in the public.

I just want to be ordinary again. I want to go back to visiting my mom in the hospital alone. I want to go back to holding the kids ears as my dad threw plates against the walls and no one knew anything. I wish I could go through the pain again, alone. I am good at being alone; I have built a life around truly being alone, emotionally. I don’t know how to go back to that place where I was surrounded by pain and everyone thought I was ordinary. I lost sight of the main goal which is that I must fake it till I make it and not allow people to see my weakness and pain. I am not someone who wants sympathy; I just wanted someone to know my story in case something ever happened to me. The sacrifice for telling my story though was that I lost the way he looked at me, before. I have never felt this way about a guy before, ever. I have never trusted any of my exes with the information I exposed to him and now that I did it, there is no turning back. I am no longer ordinary. I would give anything to feel ordinary. I try to be ordinary and hide the pain that I have endured in my 21 years of life. It started with the towns “crazy” mom or some may looked at her and saw a witch. A person with grey hair who hadn’t brushed it in months and found starving herself to be something the voices in her head were forcing her to do. Talking to empty chairs and threatening to kill us was an everyday engagement. I came home to chop up clothes and pictures or afternoons where the food was all thrown out of the house. I found out as an 8th grader that I had arthritis which ended up with me going to the hospital three times a week because I was lucky enough to qualify for a whole new study. Maintaining pain like that as an 8th grader is hard to comprehend. Then I failed at attempting to take the plunge into suicide and ended up in a strait jacket in the back of an ambulance with two hot male nurses staring at me. That summer consisted of strip searches, drugs (lots of them), SpongeBob was the only thing allowed on TV, and random mental breakdowns from other people that ended with them getting stabbed with a needle. Then there were the heartbreaks, the cheaters, the guys that failed time and time again to make an effort to stay in my life. There were the drunken ones who would pin me up against a tree and strangle me, the ones that came over with another woman’s perfume on their skin, the ones that just left without reason, and the ones that thought they understood me but had only scrapped the surface. Then there was more pain; things that to this day I can’t confront even on a piece of paper for my eyes only to see. Pain so awful that the thought of it brings me back to reliving the scenes and my stomach goes into knots and my chest starts to throb.

I have tried time and time again to feel normal. I have allowed guys to think I am just another dumb pretty face that is going to make an excellent housewife (nothing against that lifestyle). I have ignored and pushed guys away that have tried to dig deep into my soul. The jokes on them though because my soul consists of a black continuous hole that never ends. I have given guys hope for a future and when that future comes and it starts caving in on me, I have burst through and ended up on top and them left behind. I have hid the things that keep me awake at night for months upon months from guys and all they think is that I am a quiet but funny girl who goes to school and is average in appearance with a knack for making pretty damn good cookies. I have tried to come off as the girl who is fine with Netflix and chill. I have kept it all in because of the past. I am scared to not be ordinary. I recently told a guy a lot of information about myself after months of our friendship and I watched as his eyes suddenly changed for me. I was no longer this fun girl that was down for just about anything, I was this girl that was messed up in the head, who may seem a little vulnerable or unbalanced. Immediately I wished I could take it all back. I wished I could just go back to him thinking of me as this unflawed human with a little bit of mystery to her. Things have changed for us since then, he used to invite me to parties and we would end up making out on a couch in front of everyone. He would stay up late texting me and when I went away for a month in Europe he was at my door step a few days after I got home. He didn’t see all the awful things in me. Now, he’s in my secret society and I am afraid I will learn to lean on him. I am afraid I will open up more to him and I will say just one wrong thing and be pushed away forever. I am like that stray cat no one really wants but people feed from a distance. For years I have trained myself to not let people in, I have put trust in a few, and have lived my oh- so ordinary life in the public.

I just want to be ordinary again. I want to go back to visiting my mom in the hospital alone. I want to go back to holding the kids ears as my dad threw plates against the walls and no one knew anything. I wish I could go through the pain again, alone. I am good at being alone; I have built a life around truly being alone, emotionally. I don’t know how to go back to that place where I was surrounded by pain and everyone thought I was ordinary. I lost sight of the main goal which is that I must fake it till I make it and not allow people to see my weakness and pain. I am not someone who wants sympathy; I just wanted someone to know my story in case something ever happened to me. The sacrifice for telling my story though was that I lost the way he looked at me, before. I have never felt this way about a guy before, ever. I have never trusted any of my exes with the information I exposed to him and now that I did it, there is no turning back. I am no longer ordinary.