My Flat (Less Eloquent Version from a Fan)

This made me ache:
“As my mum excitedly said to me: "You'll be like a normal person!"
David Mitchell Observer Column

It reminded me of my mum saying to me: “Why aren’t you normal!?!?”

She didn’t mean to make it sound so harsh, she was merely wondering why I couldn’t fit in, be like other people. I just don’t, because I’m not ‘other people’; I’m me. Honestly, if I had any choice in that, I would be more like anyone else, because being me even puzzles me. I don’t want to be ungrateful, and I’m not. I only wished my head and heart weren’t filled with so many paradoxes.

I’m afraid of ‘being normal’, because I’m not sure what that is. To me it is a very personal idea of what anyone thinks something is or should be. Everybody has his own ideas, so I don’t think telling me to be normal is justified.

I love that column, because it is like my mum/me relationship. She keeps telling me to clean the kitchen and paint the balcony door. In my opinion the kitchen is clean enough and the colour of my balcony door doesn’t really bother me. I don’t even notice the walls or windows in my house anymore. Just like David, as can be read in his column, I don’t really care much for repairing, replacing, repainting and redecorating. It’s the kind of fuzz I’m not willing to go through if I don’t really need to. Even changing a light bulb is not something I’m likely to do. My bedroom is dark and so is the toilet. I’m not bothered.

So, to my mortgage advisor; “Yes, I did think about what I want in my new house. I want a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom (maybe toilet apart), some storage place, a bedroom and maybe one extra room. That’ll be less than what I have now, but frankly, I’m only using my kitchen, bathroom and dark bedroom and toilet...and some storage room.”

And to mum, I’ll try to make things right when I have to anyway, but that’ll be it for the coming years. Stop whining about the colours and my unmade bed; you know I’m not going to change it.

So, David, you’re not alone at all. It took me my own house and a year to find out that I actually couldn’t be bothered what my house looked like or how messy it was. It’s home to me, and that is what counts.

P.S.: I don’t even use my wardrobe anymore; I hang everything on my bedroom door or on chairs.