What We Thought Was Normal
Before we had language, we had instinct. Add your list if you feel called!
We didn’t set out to write this the same way.
Two voices. Two lenses.
One landscape—the strange terrain of survival.
When you grow up in a world where chaos is familiar and calm feels suspicious, you collect invisible skills—like armor you forget you’re wearing. Some you choose. Others seep into your bones. Muscles trained to flinch before thinking. Smiles practiced like rehearsed lines.
We each sat down to write about it.
Without comparing. Without planning.
When we did compare, the overlap was impossible to ignore.
A collaboration between
and —two voices charting the same map from different corners of memory: used to think it was normal to . . .
. . . plan my tone like an outfit—choosing what might sound “nonthreatening but useful.”
. . . wear exhaustion like a badge, believing needing rest meant I wasn’t strong enough.
. . . leave favorite things out in the open, quietly hoping someone would see them.
. . . sit completely still during movies, worried about taking up too much space.
. . . adjust how I breathed, depending on who was nearby.
. . . assume silence meant I’d done something wrong, even if I didn’t know what.
. . . shift parts of my personality to match the moment.
. . . question whether something really happened, and go back and forth about it.
. . . rehearse “safer” versions of my own emotions.
. . . measure safety by how easily I could change the subject.
. . . find shouting somehow easier to process than the smiling that came before it.
. . . watch people cry and feel numb, then feel guilty for that.
. . . turn chaos into patterns, so it might feel like something I could understand.
. . . hold on to compliments like they were proof I wasn’t imagining things.
. . . believe that love was something that should make me smaller.
. . . stay loyal to people, even when I felt afraid.
. . . wait for kindness like waiting for the weather—fleeting and beyond my control.
. . . listen for footsteps more than voices.
. . . avoid asking questions, so I wouldn’t seem difficult.
. . . manage joy carefully, worried it might be mistaken for arrogance.
. . . treat “You’re so mature” as the highest form of praise.
. . . pretend to be okay, so I wouldn’t have to comfort others about my feelings.
. . . mistake love for managing someone else’s emotions.
. . . turn down my own needs like adjusting a volume knob.
. . . not just walk on eggshells—but polish them, arrange them, and apologize if one cracked.
used to think it was normal . . .
1. To hear words hurled like spells—and to feel them stick.
2. To have my body appraised like objects on a shelf.
3. For voices to rise and crackle through the walls.
4. For corners to feel too small, and footsteps too loud.
5. For rules to shift like sand—grounding one day, punished the next.
6. For silence to stretch on for days, without explanation.
7. To be compared, measured, stacked against the people we loved.
8. For celebrations to unravel before dessert.
9. To live in houses that echoed, but never quite felt safe.
10. To be blamed for things that broke—even when we weren’t near them.
11. To bump into life, and furniture, and words, too often.
12. To carry a mind that whirred and raced, even when the world slept.
13. To wear insults like weather—familiar, unpredictable.
14. To earn love with good behavior, not simply for being.
15. To learn the art of tending to adult storms, long before we should have.
16. To witness fireworks of fury, then sweep the ashes.
17. To shout and plead and gasp, when words ran out.
18. To wake with eyes swollen from the weight of what couldn’t be said.
19. To read the air of a room before crossing its threshold.
20. To be scolded for accidents, and to tuck shame beneath my skin.
21. To stay busy, endlessly busy—as if stillness invited judgment.
22. To hear sharp words about strangers, and wonder when they’d turn on us.
23. To live in a rhythm of chaos, with no song of rest.
24. To know doctors and symptoms as well as bedtime stories.
25. To perform wellness through illness, applause through pain.
26. To move through life not grounded, but braced—always braced.
We thought it was normal to . . .
The language may have been different. One of us wrote of the air we breathed. The other of how we learned to hold it.
But beneath both was the same theme:
A nervous system that learned to scan for danger.
A self shaped around survival, not safety.
A belief that love had to be earned or managed.
An endless performance of worth.
A deep, aching question: Is this what life is supposed to feel like?
We thought it was normal.
Until we realized, it wasn’t.
And naming it? That is where healing begins.
We would love to hear your “I Thought It Was Normal To . . . ” list in the comments below, or if you want to make this a writing prompt for you and others on Substack, write your own and tag us in the article!
Thanks for being here, for listening and leaning in!
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Still amazed at how much overlapped for us. Your line about listening for footsteps gave me chills. Thank you for collaborating with me.🥹🩵 Writing my list was so freeing, I hope others join in on the exercise too!
I thought it was normal to:
Go to my second oldest brother for comfort, to take out my ODD on, for him to read to me even if it was a school textbook, when I was even younger for him to give me my bottle (not sure about diaper changes), for him to teach me how to fix a broken window, fix a flat tire on my bicycle, to learn bits about social expectations.
Go to his friends/camp councelers at summer scout camp when I was upset - they knew the routine, see my blazing forehead scare, put a hand on my forehead and let me swing at them just out of reach, when my anger was spent to let me climb up into their arms for a quick hug then - "OK, what needs to be done today?", from cutting up a bag of onions to loading a trailer with canoes, tents, cooking gear, etc., or taking a canoe out to monitor Scouts doing a Mile Swim in case they couldn't make it, to supervising on the rifle range and showing Scouts that no the rifle sights are perfect then going over shooting so that they could at least hit the target.
Only many many years later did he and I realize that I bonded with him and not my mother.