am i normal

i've heard that this is the most common question most sex therapists/advice columnists receive: am i normal?  are my desires, or lack of desires, my orientation, my proclivities, my tastes, my identities etc etc.  are they normal.

most therapists/advice columnists will say, probably, but not always, you are ordinary.  you are normal.  what is the range of normal?  well, to visualize the range of normality in our human species spread your arms out at length.  like you are spreading your wings.  that space between your fingertips is the range of normal.  

i say this with lots of caveats.  for there are spaces of our human being that are not normal.  but those spaces are infrequent to the greater population.  e.g. charles manson was a human being but he was most certainly not fucking normal.  but for the vast majority of us our tastes, desires, urges, orientations, etc etc, are so normal we can call them ordinary.

but yet still, knowing that i think many of us suffer from fright that we are not normal.  why?  shit, i don't know.  maybe that is the condition of the human being.  to fret until we grind away the enamel of our teeth that our very being is flawed.

i was just looking at pics of an eastern european poetry festival.  i was looking at the various poets from all over our international republic of poetry.  i was looking at these poets & wondering if my own body matched theirs.  i think, i suspect, that many of us suffer from body dysmorphia.  whether that might be about the size of our noses or the shape of our tummies.  whether our heads might be rightly shaped, if they might be too big or too small.  i was looking at these poets wondering if they also have small heads, pot bellies, skinny legs.  

nor do i mean to infer that my own sense of flawed self is projected upon these pictures of poets.  rather i am worrying, like many people worry over their sexualities, if my own sense of shattered self is normal.  i am a poet, for better & worse, not a famous one, or even maybe a good one, but i am a poet.  but i wonder if i fit the image of one.  whatever that image might be.

i meant to write this short rant about normality with a sense of humor.  after all, i am well aware that my flaws might be invisible to the casual observer.  but then again, maybe not.  still, the one person who gets to see me all the time is me, e.g. when i am shaving, brushing my teeth. taking a shower etc etc.  the face that looks back at me often has this expression, 'oh, it's you again.'  

i suspect that my own flaws are expressed in our collective human being.  why & how else is commercial advertising so effective.  i recall an epigraph to a galway kinnell poem titled 'holy shit' where the suitor lifts the chamber pot of his beloved & nearly has a heart attack. 'celia shits!?  oh god!  celia shits!'  as stupid as that may seem we are often freaked out that others do & feel like we do.  

so i suspect i am normal.  ordinary even.  even if i still wish my body was this & that.  no end to being a human being.  i mean there is an end.  death.  but until that happens i will always be the one looking in the mirror.  & the man who looks back at me, flaws & all, will say, once again, 'oh, it's you again.'