Not being 'normal'/dropping out of society

[firemonkey]

I don't think I've ever been what would generally be called 'normal'. I'm not even 'normal' when compared to other members here.

[Dougella]

^ I'm not sure that "normal" actually exists really. All of us here are different already in that we have SA, and then many of us have other differences in top of that. But I think it makes us all more interesting.

[Quietman]

I’ve never been normal really in anything, but it’s who I am.

Who can really say what normal is anyway as everybody’s different in so many ways.

[Amara 94]

We can't deny that certain people are seen as weird though.

[Quietman]

^ I agree with that, I don’t no why because as I said everyone has their own unique traits and actions what’s weird to some people seems normal to others.

[Amara 94]

^ I think it’s a proportional thing. Just like we say society is widely made for neurotypicals. A wide range of people would say certain behaviours are unusual even if the unusual behaviour is judged as unusual due to ignorance. That would define someone who displays the behaviours as different in the mainstream society.

[firemonkey]

The rich are 'eccentric'. The poor are 'severely mentally ill'

[Dougella]

^ Indeed. Or deviant.

[Moksha]

I suppose what really matters is authenticity. Are you living life in a way that fulfills you and makes you happy? Whether that is inside or outside the system (i.e conventional or unconventional) is irrelevant. Dropping out won't, in itself, make you happy. But neither will 'being normal'.

Many people end up living lives that don't suit them (no family, no friends, no job, etc) through no choice of their own. They get involved with the wrong people when young, end up in prison or debt, and never recover. Or they are forced out due to trauma, addiction, mental illness, or some oddity or quirk in their nature. You can be forced out for all kinds of reasons.

But the opposite is also true. Many people are forced into the system. They are bullied or pressured into marriage, for example, or kids, or a well-paid (but stressful and boring) career. Usually, it begins when they have kids with the wrong person. They don't want to abandon their child, and they don't want their child raised in a shitty area, so that means grinding away in a horrible job while trapped in a horrible marriage. Also, they may dislike their partner's friends, or family, but can't get out of seeing them. And so their entire life becomes a sham – a career they don't want, socializing with people they dislike, etc. If their partner is difficult, or domineering, they just go along with her/him because the alternative is arguments.

That said, I'm not really sure what normal is. It depends where you live I guess. If you live in a small village in Devon, for example, the child of middle-class parents, it's probably harder to drop out. People do, but they are often dogged by a sense of guilt and failure. On the other hand, if you are born on a rough estate in Hackney or Liverpool or Glasgow, the child of heroin addicts, you have nothing to drop out of! Same is true of those born to bohemians or artists. If you grew up in an artistic commune in Hampstead, surrounded by poets and hippies, the abnormal is normal.

[Dougella]

^ It tends to be the case that women (and probably also men I would assume, as it takes two) who are more educated tend to have children later and have fewer children. Also comprehensive sex education leads to fewer teenage pregnancies and STIs. Obviously there are some people who have kids at a young age who are really great parents, but I do wonder if for some people it's something that feels like an achievement to them where other options didn't seem possible.

[choirgirl]

^^Probably most of them did want them, but not all of them, I would guess. There is probably an element of getting adulthood on credit too.

You are quite right in your second paragraph. Money or something special about you makes things easier, because you often get to have your cake and eat it; having gumption and a rebel type personality and willingness to suffer to go off script, or being forced off script. There's a great comfort in scripts, if you are a certain type of person. They are tried and tested; the system works to nudge people into them, (although the basic life script seems to be breaking apart at the seams these days which is itself causing stress.) One of the many stressful things about being gay back in the day when you were growing up, or even having the thought of it as a possibility, was much of the script being rudely snatched from one's hands with nothing to replace it with.

I wouldn't go quite so far as G.K. Chesterton, with the 'you should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to', though.