Normal

Normal is underrated.

Three weeks ago, I had a cyst removed, and for the next week I was in post-scalpel misery.  Even while popping painkillers like Pez candy, I was rendered virtually immobile.  I couldn't lie on my back.  I couldn't walk.  I couldn't sit.  Not without pain rocketing throughout my body.  While lying on the floor with an oversized pillow and watching bad TV drama to distract from the throbbing, I often thought back to before, when I stupidly took those normal actions for granted.

Those times without are when we understand the value of normal.  It's when I'm at the bottom of the deep end that I realize how sweet air is.  It's when I'm too busy to eat lunch that I get to dinner and remember how good food tastes.  Normal is a delicacy we've become accustomed to dining on.

Being married to and loving Dave feels so normal now, almost alarmingly normal.  Telling him I love him is part of my daily routine.  Watching him sleep while I get ready for work is a daily treat.  It's really good, but why does it feel so normal?  Water-drinking air-breathing food-consuming normal?

Dave is a river and I am a trout.  That's what being with Dave feels like - I'm a fish in water.  Loving Dave is like breathing - it's a natural part of my body's construction, like a dormant organ that inflated after I began to love him and starting pumping.  But I have to remind myself that this wasn't always normal.

I remember the previous unrest in my life, the ground's constant heaving and the humidity of tears.  Family crises were normal; earthquakes and volcanoes tore through my life's landscape for years.  And I remember what a bastion he was to me, and continues to be.  I've forgotten what life lived on a fault line was like, I'm now so used to walking on solid earth.  It is so unbelievably incredibly normal.

And it's because of this I understand better than ever why not having someone to love aches, why losing the one you love wounds.  Because we were built to love, just as we were all born to breathe.  It's in the blueprints.  And we forget the fantastic normalcy  of breathing our beloveds in and out every day.

Breathe!  Breathe in the normal things of your life!  Breathe them in deep; catch the warmth and the scent of it.  Because there are many abnormally normal beautiful things in our lives, and you don't want to miss them just because you get them every day.