A wild goose chase to normality

I know I like to nag about it but working and socialising is a lethal combination. I am not really sure how other people do it. Do they just have an insane amount of stamina or do they go home after work kick back watch TV and only very occasionally go out? I know that most of my friends survive the ongoing marathon by simply not working at all. They use their days to recover from their nights. So what exactly is the normal way to do it all? To be normal or not to be normal, that is the question?

I believe I have never been more normal than I am today. I work in an office. I travel there by tube practically every day. I front up to the office regardless of the many temptations thrown along my path – invitations, openings, trips and many more excitements which could easily take up most of my day. Yesterday, for example, I cancelled a lovely invitation to spend the day watching tennis at Wimbledon whilst being fed and pampered because I felt I ought to be getting on with some work at the office. I am not complaining about this choice, merely illustrating that I do often deliberately choose to be normal above living extravagantly. Then, of course, I suddenly find myself in a very extraordinary surrounding which couldn’t be further from tubes and offices. My life has always been all about stark contrasts. Bishops and drag queens, castles and cramped stinky flats, strict schools and crazy parties- from an early age I have been exposed to the seemingly opposing. Is it all really opposing I wonder? After all, it is part of the same coin and merely a question of perspective.

I have embarked on a wild goose chase through W11’s real estate with the intention of buying a flat. I am amazed at myself for doing so, in fact it makes me feel incredibly normal. You see until now I have never managed to stay anywhere for longer than two years (I think I might have mentioned my two year itch). Now, I find myself practically getting engaged to London. Of course I could get a divorce and sell the place at any time but nevertheless it is a commitment of some sort. It feels scarily grown-up. Until very recently I lived out of suitcases. I rented the odd flat here and there but they were always more of a provisional storage unit than a home. My possessions were scattered between all the different cities I was connected to. A bag in Rome, shoes in New York, some dresses in Munich. My real storage was our home in Germany. One of the advantages of growing up in a castle is the never ending closet space. Having lived in so many different flats over the past years I have come to cherish the immense luxury of having space and air for my belongings. I love my clothes and I love them especially when they are washed, ironed and neatly hung in an airy closet. There couldn’t be a starker contrast from the way my closet is arranged in Germany and the way it deteriorates in London, where everything is clustered up and jumbled together. In fact my London bedroom has morphed into a walk-in closet these days. This might be due to the fact that I have an expensive shoe habit or that my cupboard is just ridiculously small or a combination of both. Consequently my room doesn’t look very neat (to say the least) and as much as I yearn for a bigger closet and more space to breath, somehow I enjoy the idea of living the way other people do amongst clutter and jumble. I feel very normal.

And it is this enjoyable feeling of normality that I get from working and being part of the “real” world. I am no longer floating around on a pink cloud. Although I enjoy the pink cloud enormously the thing about it is – and I believe to have discovered this at a very young age – you only realize it’s pink if you occasionally hop off and look at it from below. The reason why so many spoilt people are unhappy is because there are few things more crushingly boring than constantly getting what you want. The unbearable lightness of being is actually unbearably heavy.

Living in London amongst countless people who have trotted the globe and been to a party or two themselves makes me feel very normal. In fact the time I felt least normal was when I was growing up. I felt uncomfortably different. You see, we did grow up in a castle that apparently is larger than Buckingham Palace (I haven’t measured it). I grew up surrounded by very traditional old art, tapestry and china juxtaposed with incredibly crazy pieces of contemporary art my mother collected. The nannies, the staff and then the brutal reality check at school. We were moved from one house to the next depending on the season. Summers were spent by the lake, winters skiing, autumn in the forest at the shooting lodge and spring in town. In each place we attended a different school. Need I even say that we were stared at like aliens? Hence, although it all felt normal to me, I was quite aware that this wasn’t really normal. I saw the way the other kids lived and realized how abnormal our lifestyle actually was.

Where does that leave me? Well I suppose digested with a bit of humour and a slice of self-irony, all these extremes can form some sort of a balance. Anyway, I decided a long time ago that although I do feel quite normal most days I don’t really want to be normal. I mean, who cares, who can truly judge what is normal and what isn’t? After all it is very much a subjective experience. Yes, normality lies very much in the eye of the beholder.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Princess Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.