Last night’s post took longer than expected, and I was up until 2:30 in the morning. Then I didn’t sleep so great, despite the fact that I was exhausted. I’m blaming the beautiful full moon. Oh well, it’s not the first pretty thing that’s kept me up all night. (That was a sex joke, Mom.) Anyway, this morning I awoke early for two meetings, and I’ve been groggy ever since. Now it’s ten at night, and I’m going to try–try–to be in bed in an hour.

You can do this, Marcus.

This afternoon I saw my therapist, and she pointed out that I often say, “Is that normal?” Like, I’ll go on about some feeling or response I’ve had recently, then ask, “Uh, am I a freak?” I never say it like that, but isn’t that what we all want to know? Is it NORMAL to be angry or resentful, NORMAL to be pissed off or passive aggressive, NORMAL to still be hung up on someone or something that happened years ago, NORMAL to dream of killing (or fucking) a total stranger?

Well, is it?

My therapist said, “I think it’s funny that after all this time in therapy, you still think there’s such a thing as normal.”

I said, “I see you point. Soooooo–”

“It’s regular,” she said. “Yes, it’s very REGULAR.”

So that’s good to know. My internal reactions and fantasies are REGULAR.

Like a menstrual cycle!

Another thing my therapist and I talked about was loneliness, which is something I’ve occasionally experienced along this path of self-growth, usually after having a big confrontation or “going against the crowd.” I said, “It’s difficult to speak your truth. It’s hard to live differently than everybody else.” My therapist said, “I get it. And usually when I’m lonely, I take time to let it be. I don’t force it to go away. Eventually, it does.”

After therapy I went to the library and ended up reading an entire (short) book about spirituality while curled up on a couch in one of the reading rooms. Oddly enough, the author said that a frequent response to personal or spiritual growth is loneliness or grief, his explanation being that as you become your true self (or as you become born again), your false (neurotic, worried, people-pleasing) self necessarily has to die, and this false self is what you’re missing when you feel loneliness or grief. Don’t worry, he said, you’re better off without the old you, and the feeling will pass.

Another takeaway from the book for me was the idea that whenever you’re upset, angry, resentful, or whatever, it’s good to stop and notice WHERE those feelings are taking place. Obviously, the answer is INSIDE YOU, even if someone cut you off in traffic or stomped on your toe in order to stir them up. This is a good reminder to me, that I have an internal atmosphere that I’m responsible for, and that I don’t have to entertain every feeling that invites itself over for dinner. While driving home this evening and in response to other drivers, I started to get “peeved” a couple of times–however briefly–but then thought, It’s not worth it.

As Wayne Dyer used to say, I want to feel good.

Also, I want to go to bed.

[Here’s something funny. After I named tonight’s blog–As It Turns Out, I’m Regular–it occurred to me that I once named a blog something similar–As It Turns Out, I’m Normal. So I looked it up. Strangely enough, it was penned almost exactly a year (366 days) ago.]