Fuck normal.

The last thing a friend said to me—and why I'm still holding onto it.

A handful of weeks ago, we lost a dear friend. Liam lost his best friend. The last thing this friend wrote to me was: fuck normal. And I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since. Fuck normal. Which made me wonder: what is my definition of normal, anyway? Where did it come from? Is it even relevant anymore?

And I think, like so many of us in this strange transitional generation—the millennial in-between—we inherited a blueprint. Our parents carried deeply rooted beliefs in the linear through-line of a life lived right. One job to retirement. One marriage to death. It just looked a certain way. And looking right was part of it.

Our generation bridges two unfamiliar worlds. The distance between our parents' and kids' worlds is bigger than it's ever been between two generations (yes, the Industrial Revolution made for a chasm, too, but ours is moving way faster). And we're standing in the middle of it. Living the messy middle between the blueprint we were handed and the reimagined one our kids will inherit. We are blowing up the through-line in real time. Without a map, template, or knowing how it’ll turn out. That’s us, we signed hefty soul contracts.

The weighty seasons of life can come in years or in decades. They’re not the problem. They’re the point. When Tom shared “fuck normal” with me and then decided to eject from this season of life, it felt both devastating and, in an eerily heartbreaking way, like maybe I could understand. Because it can be so disorienting when the current chapter doesn’t look like what you intuit the future ones will. The gap between where you are and where you’re going can read like proof that something is wrong. A little bit wrong or a whole lot of wrong. When really, it’s just another kind of messy middle.

The disorienting season isn’t the problem. It’s building you for the ones that are coming. The ones you can already feel somewhere in your system. Not fully formed, not here yet, but expressed somewhere in the non-linearity of time.

So here’s to the weird seasons. Here’s to holding the bridge with an open hand. Not fuck normal as a middle finger to everything that came before, but as a steady commitment to redefining what normal gets to mean. For us. For our kids. For the ones who come after.

Tom, this one’s for you.

Meg x