anyway shout out once again to love me normally by will wood for being one of the few pieces of art I've encountered that takes that feeling seriously.
I've always felt that whenever I say I wish I could be "normal," people rush to jump down my throat with the same adages- that "normal is boring," "there's no such thing as normal," whatever. and that's typically the moral pushed in anything that deals with the idea of feeling abnormal. which is usually well-intentioned, but when you go days of your life desperately wanting to know and understand normality, it just feels isolating. I always hated being told "just be yourself" for a slew of reasons, but mainly because it just... sort of does nothing.
which is why I love the song so much. it really sits with that dysphoric feeling (in a general sense), gives a voice to it, and lets you just feel without being told to just get over all that pain and shame. there's nothing about how your abnormality is actually a "superpower," nothing about how "normal is just a setting on the dryer," nothing about "everyone is a little quirky in their own way" (and even if they are, at least they're better at hiding it than I am, goddammit!). it allows you to process those emotions instead of instantly shutting them down. like, yeah. sometimes it does suck to feel you aren't normal. sometimes, you do want normalcy, even if you know it's just a "majority concept" you as an individual have no control over, as richard matheson put it. I think it's so, so important to be honest and recognize when that awful feeling is there- and this song has done that for me in a way that nothing else really has.