Not long (enough) ago, our family endured the diagnosis of pinworms. For those of you lucky enough not to know what that means, I invite you to Google the topic. We got through it, after some hot-water wash cycles and chocolate medicine, but not before TK–in an inspired moment of strategic avoidance–informed his psychologist during his session that his “mom has butt worms.”

Luckily, she was mature and gracious about it, informing him that it’s a common occurrence, while I wanted to scream out “WELL I PROBABLY GOT THEM FROM HIM” because, as the doctor informed me, kids are the likely source and recent research shows we couldn’t blame the dog. Regardless of the source, we all had to take the medicine, because this is a condition easily passed between family members. So we ate our chocolate squares with our meal, twice in three weeks, and came out the other side so to speak, together.

Butt worm proclamations notwithstanding, TK is reaching that age where he’s really concerned about what people think, and last weekend when we headed out to the dog park, he took issue with the fact that I was wearing one of TH’s hats. “It doesn’t look good on you,” he said, “and it’s not yours.” I challenged him on every point, until finally, in a fit of frustration, he yelled out, “I just want to look like a NORMAL FAMILY!”

Oh honey, that ship, she has sailed. And we were never on it. Didn’t even get tickets.

But I remember feeling the same way as a kid: not wanting to stand out in any possible way; just wanting to fly under the radar. I remember it, actually, as an adult, not long (enough) ago: the desire to blend in at all costs. To pursue “normal” as a virtue. It did not work out for me. Introverted powers of observation combined with the self-awareness gained through therapy meant normal was sidelined for the flattening joke that it is, and here I sit in another category entirely–one that is more populated than I expected, and by people I’d rather be with anyway.

“If we are artists–hell, whether or not we’re artists,” writes Dani Shapiro, “it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn’t have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.”

Something not quite…normal.

A friend dragged me off the couch last night at the ungodly, middle-of-the-night hour of 9:15 to see a play, and for about fifty minutes we watched as one woman performed a day in a life spinning out of control–not because of anything extraordinary, but because of the banalities of a normal existence. “I resemble this,” I thought, watching the woman’s mental health suffer under all the weight she carried, “even if she’s being a bit melodramatic and attention-seeking about it,” I wrote later from my weekly blog in which I publish my overwrought, innermost thoughts on social media.

The thing about landing left of normal, and realising that’s where you belong, is that you come to find there’s a piece of everyone there, whether they admit it or not. Some of the people there, the ones who finally admit that’s where they belong too, they start to look like family. Which is how you end up finding your place wherever you are: in the audience of a play, at a pub with your kids’ soccer team and their families, at the dog park on the Lord’s day, on the school playground or in the audience at an assembly. This belonging you never expected, all because you went and told (yourself) the truth…and put on the nervous sweatshirt your friend got you because she knows you like family…and stopped trying to be so normal.