“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
— Albert Camus
All the people I loved didn’t realize this. I didn’t realize this. No one ever told me how much of life would be performance. Not for success, attention, or approval but just to be seen as functional. As “normal.” As someone who can love and be loved without complication. Mimicking the cadence of a human life. Laughing on cue. Speaking when spoken to. Folding sadness into tiny, palatable origami birds and let them flutter behind you, unnoticed. A daily crucifixion.
Normal.
A word I’ve worn like an ill-fitting dress.
Who defines it? Why do I chase it?
What did I see in myself that made me feel so other?
The people I loved didn’t love me back. Not because they were cruel. But because they didn’t see the real me. Or maybe I never let them. Because “normal,” for someone like me, has always meant hiding the parts that feel too heavy. The parts that remember things too vividly. That feel love too closely, like a pulse just under the skin. And to people who are used to lighter things, that kind of love feels like a burden. Or worse ... madness.
So I began to reshape myself, not out of dishonesty, but out of survival. I stopped reaching for love that looked me in the eye. I learned how to romanticize distance. To fall in love with people I couldn’t touch. Seas and oceans gave me room to breathe. Time zones gave me excuses not to ask for more. There’s a kind of elegance in the unattainable … it doesn’t ask you to be real.
And I made a list. I always make lists. Reasons. Explanations. Proof that this is all deliberate. That I’m not afraid ... I’m just particular.
Reason one: I love different cultures. And I do. The way other people carry language like art. The way love sounds softer in accents that aren’t mine. The way unfamiliarity gives me permission to keep a little distance.
Reason two: men in my own country exhaust me. There’s a hardness to them, a kind of inherited emotional silence that passes for masculinity. They don’t know how to listen without trying to fix. They don’t ask questions unless the answers are easy.
Reason three: distance is more efficient. I don’t have to rearrange my life for someone who’s already out of reach. I can give what I want, when I want, and no one notices the parts I withhold.
Reason four: I don’t think I’m beautiful in the way people stay for. I’ve spent enough time in front of mirrors and behind conversations to know that some faces are easier to love. Mine isn’t one of them. Not up close.
And then there’s the reason I don’t write down:
I am terrified of being left. Extremely terrified.
Not just left, but looked at with love and still left. Those who have read my piece, “What it means to let go of a father,” might understand. That kind of abandonment is familiar. I’ve survived it before, but I don’t know how to carry it.
And so I learned how to love with a leash.
If you never get too close, you don’t have to grieve the loss.
You just call it distance.
You call it timing.
You call it nothing.
Camus once wrote that in the depth of winter, he found within himself an invincible summer. I’m not sure I believe that. I think some of us are built for cold. Some of us learned too young that warmth was conditional. And so we become experts in moderation. In control. In rationing how much of ourselves we give because we never learned how to survive losing all of it.
But I still want love. Not the distant kind. The kind you have to show up for. The kind you can’t edit or schedule or romanticize into something safer than it really is.
Still, when you’ve spent years trying to seem normal, it’s hard to believe someone will stay for the real thing. Not the curated version. But the whole, trembling mess of you.
And maybe that’s why none of the people I loved ever really loved me back. Because I never gave them the chance.