Normal. So many emotional scabs crusted over the wound caused by that word, and yet the way Ian said it exposed the hurt again with an unknowing surgical precision. “Why you can’t just be normal?” My dad had asked that same question the afternoon they’d thrown out my records, six words loaded up with equal parts anger, disappointment, and taunt. What did normal even mean? We were never going to be normal in that neighborhood at that time. He was never going to be normal to his neighbors and coworkers, and his unending aspiration to meet some buttoned-down standard was never, ever going to
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