When you think about your life and how you want it to play out, how do you imagine it? What’s your happy ending? Do you picture the big house with a two-car garage, with a pool in the backyard where you and your husband/wife can watch your 3 kids and dog play? It seems that this is the dream for a lot of people in the LGBTQIA+ community. I don’t knock them for it because if that’s what would make you happy then I say go for it, but whenever I mention how none of that really matters or appeals to me I get all the weird stares. Why is that?

Well, sometimes I have to wonder if it’s because we, as a community, are still a little afraid of not being accepted in society. Sure marriage equality is now the law and that is a beautiful thing but do we still feel the need to fit in? To blend in?

It’s almost as if we don’t want to scare the good straight folks so we have to figure out a way to walk among them and blend in as much as possible. Kind of like when you’re hunting and the deer is close but you need to get closer so you put on the camouflage and you tip-toe closer to it (don’t worry straight people, hetero hunting is NOT a part of the gay agenda).

In all seriousness though, what society deems ‘normal’ shouldn’t really be any of your concern. If you picture yourself being a bachelor all your life and having occasional flings then that’s fine; if you don’t want kids and prefer to stay somewhere different every year then that’s cool too. What you shouldn’t do is feel like you have to conform to a heteronormative, or at least the idea of what society thinks is normal, lifestyle because that will only lead to a loss of self and depression, extra-marital affairs, divorce, or worse.

Now I don’t mean to get all dark on you but I say all that to make the point that life is meant to be spent being happy. Don’t try to fit in, just be you. If you are someone that wants that happy, suburban, hetero-normative lifestyle then that’s great too. It doesn’t make you boring or lame or an “Ameri-zombie,” whatever the hell that is, it makes you a regular person. Just like being 45 and single with no kids doesn’t make you sad or creepy. Everyone is focused on what the ‘new normal’ is but, I think, instead we should be focused on the personal normal because that’s what’s going to make you truly happy.

“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” – Charles Addams