Odd: Deviating from what is ordinary, usual, or expected; strange or peculiar.

“Where's your will to be weird?” 

— Jim Morrison

“So you're a little weird? Work it! A little different? OWN it! Better to be a nerd than one of the herd!” 

— Mandy Hale

“I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?” 

— Tori Amos

The word normal came into the English language in the year 1500. It meant typical or common. By 1640 the word normal had taken on mathematical and engineering meaning. It meant “made according to the carpenter’s square”....

Eventually, by the late 1800’s, the word normal merged with the fledging science of psychology to mean a “normal person or thing”. Of course, once the normal person had been defined, it was only a matter of time before the “abnormal” person was defined as well. Those of us diagnosed with mental illness were, and are still considered, “abnormal”, meaning we exist outside the norm. Unlike the carpenter’s square, we are irregular. A bit untamed. Toward the tail ends of the normal distribution.

In the early years after being diagnosed with schizophrenia all I wanted to do was to “get back to normal”. I wanted to be like my friends who were going to college or getting married. I just wanted to get back to being normal. I thought that was the goal of my treatment: to get normal.

Eventually I learned that recovery is not about becoming normal. The goal of recovery is to become the precious gift that we were born to become. The goal of recovery is to achieve our human potential. The goal of our recovery is to become the unique, never-to-be repeated gift that we are.

~Dr. Pat Deegan

Jonathan Harnisch's struggles with his mental health conditions are interlinked with the incomprehension of non-sufferers, which provokes him to explain his reality.