I want a normal life.

I have always wanted a normal life.

The kind of life I've seen in movies. The kind of life I've read in novels. The kind of life I'm seeing when I scroll my own Twitter feed, posted by people looking back through their past experiences. The kind of life I hear people speak of. The kind of life I always feel envious about. The kind of life that's not mine. The kind of life they are having. Everyone else's. The kind of life that's happier. More fun. Normal. 

Or at least, it seems to me like what a normal life should be.

I wanted to be a kid with plenty of playmates. The cheerful kid whom every other kids like to interact with, because I look exactly the same in their eyes. I did not wish to be a kid spending almost all of her time inside a library, or near bookshelves, nose deep behind every book and magazine I could lay my hands onto. I did not wish to be a kid whose body is bigger than literally almost everyone else at kindergarten, or at school, that other kids loved to avoid me because they were afraid of my big size, or laughed at and called me with unpleasant names because of my size. I am okay with not being privileged enough to learn things I want―ballet, musical instruments, and whatnots―but at least I wanted to have playmates. And I never wished for myself to get bullied.

I wanted to a teenager just like any other ones. I wanted to have some people whose faces I could stick on my bedroom wall, decorated with colorful pens saying "BFF" or other flowery words. When I finally got to watch the widely popular Ada Apa dengan Cinta? years later after its released date, I could never relate to the "Geng Cinta" because I never knew a friendship like that. Back then, I was introduced way too soon to a friendship where everyone is quietly trying to tear down the other, badmouthing anyone who's not present. And it was damn hell exhausting. I wanted my peers. A healthy circle of friends. Something that so many people love to brag about: finding their closest companions in their school days... I wanted that.

I wanted to be like other girls, back then in my school days. And college days. Maybe I wanted to be like the boys, too. They had fun. They found love, even the ones which didn't last very long. They confessed or got confessed to. They got their feelings reciprocated. I  must admit, I was very envious about that. I still am. I was always a little bit too serious. A little bit too uptight. A little bit too driven as a student. A little bit too fat. A little bit too plain. A little bit less pretty. I did not want a string of rejection after rejection, but that was all I got. I can't brag, or share silly stories about my ex-boyfriends like other people because I never had one. I was that person nobody took a second glance at. Maybe they didn't even see me.

I have always wanted a normal life.

But I've never got anything else other than the one I'm living, so is this what's "normal" for me?

z. d. imama