Normal vs Happy

A while ago, I searched Jeanette Winterson on the public library website and came across this book.  Strangely, I had never heard of it until then.  For various reasons, I knew I wanted to read it.  After all, the title is intriguing enough.

It turns out the book is somewhat of an autobiography.  I had read various things about the author's life from various places before, but this was very different.  It was also very different from her other books.

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?

That is the question the author's mother asked her when the world figured out she was gay.  Eventually, the author left her family and lived her own life, hardly ever returning to her family.  Essentially, there's a large focus on two things: longing and belonging.  An interesting read, with a lot of things that made me think......

"I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books.  The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex."

"Our own front door can be a wonderful thing, or a sight we dread; rarely is it only a door."

"We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury.  Our bodies remember.  Our neurotic states remember.  But we don't."

"It takes much longer to leave the psychic place than the physical place."

"Truth for anyone is a very complex thing.  For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include.  What lies beyond the margin of the text?  The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world......There are so many things we can't say, because they are too painful.  We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way.  Stories are compensatory.  The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control.  When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening.  It is a version, but never the final one.  And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold.  When we write we offer the silence as much as the story.  Words are the part of silence that can be spoken..."

"I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small.  For the life-changing things, you must risk it."

And...perhaps...that was my mistake.

What does it mean to be happy?

What does it mean to be normal?

It seems...I'm not normal...and I'm not all that happy.

So...what am I?