Queerly Designations

This being the end of the year, I've come to terms with something about myself: I'm a little queer. No, not in the sexuality sense. I'm strange, there's something off about me, but queer is really the best way to describe it. I do things backwards, I'm clumsy, I say weird things at weird times, the most crazy thoughts gallop through my head on a regular basis, the way I go about somethings makes normal people look at me funny...but I'm going to stop letting myself feel bad about it.

We have a world full of billions of people, and it makes sense to hold every one of them to a single standard? A standard that is only vaguely defined, that makes people feel inadequate if they don't somewhat resemble it? And those few who do manage some sense of it are a minority (that I very much pity) rather than the majority? Normal?

And I thought I was the backwards one.

Normal is too stressful, too mundane. The thought of a "normal" life honestly terrifies me, once I get right down to thinking about it. I'm supposed to jump in this miles-deep rut that makes nobody really happy but is given all the attention of what life is all about? Where's the fun in that?

A happy man and his happy wife, in their happy jobs, with their happy dog and happy children who go to their happy school, and they all live happily together in the happy suburbs with their happy neighbors. Everyone wants that? And look at how very seldom that truly occurs.

Ugh. Reminds me of the song "Little Boxes". If you've never heard it, give it a listen.

Not for me. This queer girl wants life to be an adventure. I'm not going to be the one stuck in the suburbs thinking about all the things she wished she had done but didn't and is now going nowhere. If I'm going to be clumsy and awkward, I might as well be clumsy and awkward in a place I've always wanted to see or doing something I've always wanted to do.

I meant for this post to discuss my complete lack of normal, but I'm glad I always follow the bunny trails to the bigger picture. It's too normal to focus on just myself anyway.

I am queer. And that is just fine.

P.S. Who decided that queer had to mean homosexual all of the sudden? Or even gay? Those two words meant completely different things fifty years ago and we've lost two good, specific descriptions because everyone interprets them to mean homosexual these days. Gay is happy. Queer is strange. Call me old-fashioned but any time I type those two words or you hear them come out of my mouth, I intend them for their original use and strange or happy is what they mean.