When Will I Be Normal?

It occurred to me while I was showering yesterday, that I hadn't had hair on my head in so long, I wondered when I would return to normal.

And then an alarm blasted me in the head – YOU WERE NEVER NORMAL!

I almost fell in the shower. The thought was so true. I have never been normal, so how could I return to a place I'd never been?

And then I asked myself, what IS normal? Should I rely on statistics to help me figure it out? OK, I'm too tall to be normal, I'm too old to be normal, and I'm too unemployed to be normal. I fall way out of the statistical range of normal in so many respects, I have to wonder who exactly IS normal.

But I think what I meant when I said the word, "normal," was – when will I return to MY VERSION of normal? I'm still stumped, though, because normal keeps changing. At one time normal meant getting up and going to work every morning. Then normal became working out of my home providing day care.

Suddenly normal became having surgery and going for chemo treatments every three weeks. And now normal is doing stupid things like the stupid thing I did last night.

My bedroom light fixture had only one working bulb, so I took out one of the three nonworking bulbs and replaced it with a new bulb.

The new bulb didn't work, so I removed another nonworking bulb and tried replacing it with the new bulb, and that one didn't work either. And when I tried the third bulb, I discovered that that one didn't work! Great! I was doomed to live in a dimmed bedroom.

So just when I thought my whole light fixture was broken, A LIGHT BULB WENT OFF IN HEAD!  I realized that my light fixture had a chain on the bottom that allowed the bulbs to light up in increments. One light, two lights…you get the picture. Duh!

But what's really nice about that light bulb experience is that those kinds of things happen to me all the time, so I really am returning to MY kind of normal – a little offbeat, a little outside the boundaries of statistical norms, but totally me.

And so while I await new hair growth (I just finished my last BAD chemo treatment Monday), and even while I resume chemo, but this time with a drug that doesn't cause nausea or hair loss or any of the other numerous side effects I've been experiencing), and even though I will have to go through radiation and several months more of chemo treatments, I am returning to normal.

One day within the next few months, I will be able to remove my hats and scarves and create a hairstyle, I will be able to apply mascara to my new eyelashes, and I will not have to deal with insomnia or loss of energy.

And when I take a shower, I'll be able to use shampoos and conditioners, something I used to take for granted when I was "normal."