Normal

College is supposed to be a time when you explore all sorts of new concepts - new ideas that you are being exposed to both in the classroom and outside, new people that you are meeting, new roles that you are trying on, new possibilities. Educationally I could not have found a better college. In all other respects I fit in about as well as a surfboard in Alaska (crappy analogy). I fully understand the great power of shunning in communities such as the Amish. All because I was not wealthy, not super-model thin, and not willing to sell myself to whatever values were considered popular that week. So it has been a very long time since I have felt normal and accepted. It has been a very long time since I have forgotten that I was in exile for being inside of a body that is damaged goods, for growing up in the wrong parts of town, and for not being ashamed of either.
On Tuesday I went with a friend to a really cool town not terribly far from here (within a reasonable drive) that I have been wanting to visit. It is a small town set back away from the crazy edge of city life that surrounds it, right on a river, and it is made up of these unique stores and restaurants (mainly bakeries and cafes). The buildings are almost all historic and maintained appropriately (or as appropriately as possible) and it is really quaint. I had so much fun! More than fun, while walking up and down the streets, wandering in and out of stores and chatting about this and that I felt something I had not felt in a long time. I felt amazingly normal. I did not feel like an outsider. I did not feel like someone separate or damaged or marked or not quite equal. I did not feel unworthy or less or like I needed to walk a tightrope. I felt perfectly, beautifully normal. I was physically doing things that I could not have done two years ago, I was enjoying a rare beautiful day, I was laughing, I was not worring about what others thought of me, I was having fun, I was being me. That day was a more precious gift than my friend will ever know. Not only was it a great distraction following Monday's crappy news, it was a gift of seeing myself as more than I had seen myself in a very long time. Plus it was just an all around interesting and fun day.
I posted pictures that I took to my Flickr account. I did not take nearly as many as I wanted to take - I guess I will have to go back there soon. :)