Why do I have to be the grown up?

“Why do I have to be the grown up?”

“Because someone has to be, and it looks like you're the only one capable of being so, even if you don't want to be.” I can hear the voice in my head. It could be my mother's.

Of course, I can be right and they can be wrong – but they won't see it that way. And if I persist, then the stakes will get higher and higher until real damage is done.

It's not fair! Why am I the only one who seems to see this early enough to back down, even though I know they are the one being unreasonable?

I resent them more for this, and so part of me wants to continue escalating, wants to lash out, wants to hurt, to prove the point.

But still I see the damage that will cause, so I have to be the adult, the one to back down, even though I still know them to be unreasonable in their position. If I persist in being right, we will all lose.

Why can't they see it too?

Why do I have to be the grown up in this?

Because someone has to be, and it looks like I'm the only one capable of being so, even if I don't want to be.

Are you normal, or other?

The idea of "normality" is just a loosely defined convention acting as a fragile meeting ground of vastly different ways of thinking and perceiving the world.

No one is actually "normal," instead we all overlap sections of it like a giant venn diagram.

The problem comes when, instead of understanding that no two people see the world in the same way, we are told that anyone who does not fully reside inside this construct is an "other".

Dividing the world into Us and Them has always been a way to control people. We all live in fear of being found out that there are aspects to us which would exclude us from the very narrow definition of what it is to be acceptable.

We are all "other".