I have not put stock in the opinions of others (particularly strangers) since my childhood; part of that is having a developmentally disabled sister born 10 years after me. Another part comes from having two alcoholics/addicts for parents. I'm not sure I had any grounding in reality until my independence at age 18, and even that took years before it really penetrated.
To a degree, both parents, but most especially my mother, have had the rare privilege all their lives to either construct or interpret reality through a prism of utter unreality and falsehood, allied and abetted by their addictions. Growing up, my sisters and I (being the eldest) lived in a dreamscape of illusions and deceptions. There are hundreds of examples, but perhaps the clearest to explain briefly is this:
I was born in January, 1960; my sister was born in May, 1962. In 1992, when I was
32 year old, I was at the beach one day with her and I suddenly grabbed her arm.
"How far apart in age are we?" I asked her.
Without thinking, she replied "Eighteen months apart." My mother had always maintained that, and we never questioned that.
"Count on your fingers," I told her. "January 1960 to January 1962 is 24 months, then add five more: that's twenty-nine months."
She looked at me with the oddest look, as if either I were lying or else "pink" suddenly had turned "green": "Oh my fucking gawd! You're right!"
When people who don't know me very well hear me speak casually that complete estrangement is the only possible way of coping with my mother (who also rages uncontrollably and unpredictably), I'm either viewed as bitter or a complete asshole. She's my mother after all: I should feel the need to have her in my life. The fact is that it's just simply too painful for me to abide by her view of reality; it's like she lives in some weird alternate universe, and it necessitates a trip over there every time you talk with her: and she's never, ever wrong, never.
Oh, and we're eighteen months apart
I think that Ramsey is confounding "normal" with "acceptable" or "tolerable"; I rarely use the word "normal" because it just sounds hollow in my ears. Instead, I tend to use the word "standard".
There are many things in life that are intolerable and completely unacceptable, and each individual gets to make his/her own judgements regarding where those boundaries exist; we even allow society at large to shape our lives through laws and stigmas. There are many things I accept as "standard", though I don't necessarily feel the need to adhere to the lowest common denominator, which is what "normal" means in everyday speech most of the time.
I also sincerely believe that just because something's legal doesn't make it right, and just because something's illegal doesn't make it wrong. This relativism is and always has been an essential part of my psyche and explains why I describe myself as an Individualist Anarchist. I've never been arrested :wink:
