My team of mental health professionals in particular didn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t comforted by being normal, that I took normal as an insult, that knowing these troubles were widely felt didn’t ease them, only meant that on top of my avoidance and guilt and shame and numbness I now felt boring, a kind of death. Knowing all this was normal put me somewhere on the scale of pathetic to suicidal. I thought, If this is normal, count me out.
