Lent Day 15 - Not Normal

I was 24 years old and working part time for a church and part time on campus at USF with the Baptist Collegiate Ministries. This day I was at the BCM. We had a pretty regular routine going where at lunch a bunch of the guys would go out to eat - preferably at a buffet of some kind. There was at least a half dozen of us - a mix of students and staff. This particular day, I was about to find out something shocking. 

As usual, when we walked outside, I started sneezing. I had always wondered what caused it, so I decided to ask the other guys. “Hey. You know when you sneeze when you go outside? What do you think causes that? Is it the heat from the sun heating your sinuses really quickly? Or does the light trigger something when your pupil dilates?” 

Everyone stopped walking and turned to look at me - wearing identical looks of confusion. “What the heck are you talking about?” My boss asked, voicing what everyone else was thinking. 

Now I felt embarrassed- for them! How did they not understand? I persisted, “You know? When you sneeze in the sunlight? When you go outside?” 

Six blank faces. “No.” My boss answered. The other guys shook their heads. 

“You guys don’t sneeze when you walk outside?” Now I was really confused. 

“No. Who does that?” 

“Everybody does,” I insisted. “My mom does. And my sister. I thought everybody did.”

That was when I found out that sneezing when you walk out into the sun is NOT a normal thing. Later on I found out it is a condition called ACHOO. (Not joking.) Only about 20% of people have it. It is genetic. Heather’s family doesn’t have it, but I passed it on to all of our children. She tries to hide whenever all of us are walking through a parking lot, me and the kids sneezing as we walk. 

I was completely floored that sunlight sneezes were not normal. I’m my little world, we all did it. So, I figured that everybody did it. This is one of the very difficult lessons I have had to learn over the years. Just because it was normal for you doesn’t mean it was normal for everyone. And, going further, just because it was normal for you doesn’t mean it was good or healthy. When the kids were young, this led to multiple arguments between me and Heather. When I would discipline them, I would get loud. When I got frustrated, I would get loud. When I got angry, I got REALLY loud. In our house growing up, that was how things were handled. The volume always went up during tense situations. (Sometimes if it is just me getting excited about things, I get loud. Heather has to tell me to calm down because it starts to sounds like I’m yelling at her.) Yelling and screaming were commonplace in my house.  Not so much in Heather’s home. It was startling and painful for her to experience the thing that was perfectly normal to me. It wasn’t good or healthy for me, but I had grown accustomed to it. 

Everyone has a very narrow view of the world that is based on their experiences. It can be as simple as having grown up in a home that uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta cheese in their lasagna. It’s a travesty. Or what kind of milk you buy. Growing up, we always bought 2% milk, so I bought 2% when I first was on my own. That was the normal thing to do. When I moved to Tampa, I was given room and board with a senior adult - she was a lovely woman and we had a great time. But she bought skim milk. Who buys skim milk? It is just white water. I’m sure that my father made some sweeping statement at some point about the idiocy of skim milk drinkers. (I got used to it, though.) I thought chicken and turkey were supposed to be bland and dry. McDonald’s burgers were gross because they were made of worms. Oh, I’m sorry. Does that sound bizarre? That’s what we were told. 

But those are all just silly examples. What about when it comes to things with much higher stakes? Like thoughts about religion? Family? Race? Ethics? I grew up in the South. There are many things down here that are considered “normal”that are not okay. There is a long checkered past to demonstrate that. I grew up with beliefs because that was always what was presented to me. I didn’t know any better. I heard the same messages at home, at church, at school. One lesson I learned time and again was that love was given and withheld based on behavior. It led to me trying to always be perfect, which is impossible - obviously. I also would constantly come up with excuses for my wrong behavior. I had to or people would think that I was bad, that I was worthless, that I wasn’t worth loving. It made me defensive whenever people brought up mistakes I made, which led to lots of yelling and stress for everyone. It took a long time for me to recognize that belief was very wrong. But it isn’t so easy to just turn off those thoughts. Even though I KNOW that I have worth and value, that I deserve love, I still get anxious whenever someone suspects that I made a mistake. My brain immediately starts running through possible explanations (excuses).

When I lived in Tampa, I got called for jury duty and actually made it all the way through to the courtroom as an alternate. The lawyers were going through their questions to cull potential jurors who would be biased. They asked about if they knew police officers or would be biased against cops. They asked if anyone had been abused physically. Then they would dismiss people based on their answers. Eventually, I got pulled up into the jury box. They asked me if I needed to say anything based on the questions. I said that I knew several police officers. They asked if I knew the cops in the case, which I didn’t. Then I said that I had been a witness to physical abuse. They asked if I had been abused, and I answered that I hadn’t. I had been spanked, but nothing out of the normal. They lawyer started to ask follow ups, but the Judge stopped him. He said that he didn’t think that they needed to put me through the followups; he would just excuse me. It was weird to me, because it seemed like the Judge felt it wasn’t normal at all. When I first was in counseling, I would share different things about my childhood. I would toss off some comment and start to move on, because I thought it wasn’t a big deal. Several times, my therapist would stop me. “David, that isn't normal. It isn’t okay that happened.” Each time, it would throw me for a loop. One thing in particular was when I said that I was an angry person. He was visibly stunned. He said, “David, I work with a lot of people. I’ve seen a lot of angry people. You aren’t an angry person. You’re a person who gets overwhelmed when he feels out of control and may blow up as a result. But you aren’t angry.” I had never had anyone tell me that I wasn’t angry. I had been told I was angry my entire life. I just believed it because people who I trusted told me that I was. That was normal. Until it wasn’t. It changed everything.

It is very uncomfortable when something you consider normal is proven to not be normal at all. Like someone is chipping away at the foundation of your home. It makes you feel off kilter and wonky. And the temptation is to deny those revelations. We become comfortable with what we know, even when it isn’t good for us. Like a lion that is so used to a cage that it forgets that it could be king of the jungle. I’m trying to get a handle on all of this. I still feel like I’m going to get in trouble for straying from what I was told is right. When the kids were little, I remember always worrying that I was going to be judged for how I parented them. I was always more strict with the kids when other people were around - even though I didn’t want to be. Some of the worst blowouts I had with the kids was when other people were around. I felt I needed to prove that I still was a good parent. When it was just our little family, we did things differently than what we experienced growing up. We had come to the place where we wanted to change things up from our childhood. But we worried that it wouldn’t go over well. What did it matter if other people judged us? Did that mean that we were bad parents? Did it mean we were wrong? No. But that is the power that “The Normal” has. I can only imagine how the kids felt, trying to understand why things changed from place to place. Over the years, we have been able to break the hold that “The Normal” has on us with our kids. Unfortunately, the older kids didn’t get to experience as much of our newfound awareness. Our youngest was the biggest beneficiary. We used to have these huge throw downs with him over stuff like wearing long pants. We thought it was important to make him obey. But he has sensory issues. He hates the way certain things feel on his skin. He wasn’t being belligerent; he was uncomfortable. Now, we say if he wants to be cold, he can be cold. It isn’t worth fighting about. That may seem like a simple decision, but it took a long time to get there. 

I’m certainly not at the place yet where I can break away from “The Normal” completely. For example, I nearly didn’t post this at all. All of those fears and self-doubts came back. I stopped writing, started up, stopped, started. I finally decided I wouldn’t post and just say “oh well, I lost the battle today.” That’s what I usually do. But the whole point of this writing project is to force myself to fight through. So I had Heather read it - I needed someone to tell me the voices were lying, that the fear wasn’t worth quitting over, that it’s okay for me to ignore what I’ve become far too comfortable doing. It may not be my best entry, but it is done. And that’s another strike against that cage.