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A Normal Life

Do you ever wonder if other people have something to do with their time that qualifies them for a more feet on the ground existance?

Despite the very strange industry I work in being in a state of who knows when it will end turmoil, I find myself on an upswing of happiness these days. The other notable point of this is that it is winter, and for the past five winters living in a low lying daylight starved bungalow, depression has been undeniably with me.

Making decisions could have something to do with it, and menopause at the root of that. Until this season of life took hold, the motto speak only when spoken to could have been my life guiding mantra. Now, I can’t keep my mouth shut. I butt into other’s conversations and enthusiastically give my opinion to anyone in ear shot. Doesn’t matter whether or not we know each other. That budding habit woke me up a bit. I wasn’t use to people scurrying away from me, glancing over their shoulders in retreat to see if they were being followed.

This got my attention in a couple of ways. I was freely speaking, and that’s a major change in who I’ve been. Another thing, though, has to do with a person’s place in the world. Actors who present who they are without trying to erase decades are heros. Kelly McGillis on the L Word last night is a good example. We’re about the same age, and in her the normal changes life and years bring on hadn’t been cut away. Many days looking in the mirror, I use memory more than eyesite as my place in the world is often also based on memory instead of the present moment-another topic altogether. This isn’t to say I am down on people who have costhmetic surgery, I don’t like the part of our culture that says a person has to look a certain way to be of value.

So, in an attempt to get back on to the initial topic, what I have been finding is something shared by a few over the years. And that is, the power and the place in the world I hold are mine and that how I do this is mostly up to me. A normal life? Aren’t they all. Sometimes I wonder about my single existance, ecstatically happy with a house of boys of other species, even different from one another. In my normal life, joy can be where ever I want it to be.