Looking for Normal

If someone had told me that one day I would write a book about autism and mental illness, I would have looked over my shoulder to see if they were talking to the person standing behind me. Yet, here I am, having written almost three hundred pages of gut-wrenching self-analysis; exploring in depth those very things: autism and mental illness.

Looking for Normal was not, however, the first title that came to mind. I almost went with Autism—And All The Other Complicated Stuff I Was Too Embarrassed to Talk About, But Did Anyway. I rejected this idea, not because it would have been an inaccurate description of the book’s content, but because it would have been far too long to fit neatly on the cover.

Can I Start Again Please? Was another title contender: if only I could restart the clock at 1959 and have another go—but this time as a knowingly autistic person.

Eventually, after weeks of insomnia-inducing procrastination, I decided that Looking for Normal best describes my valiant, if often farcical attempts at life: a life darkened by the long shadow of my assumed childhood abnormality. Ah, yes—my childhood. I mean… what the hell happened back then? Why had the doctors described me in ways that would have today’s politically correct brigade foaming at the mouth? The doctors said I was abnormal, maladjusted and emotionally disturbed. Surely it was not ‘normal’ to spend the majority of one’s childhood being psychologically prodded and poked, medicated and hospitalised.

Someone who knew me as a child recently remarked that after such a wholly dysfunctional start in life, it’s a miracle I’m still alive, let alone been able to raise a couple of kids, stay married for thirty years and achieve a modicum of success in the music business. I’m not sure whether I should feel flattered or saddened by their comments: because being a person for whom the glass is generally half-empty, I can only reflect on the things I haven’t achieved in life; how things could have—should have been.

Aside from the tricky task of choosing a title that sums up the entirety of one’s life in a snappy three-word strapline, there are a number of other things to consider when writing a memoir, or autobiography as some may choose to call this book. For example, how deeply can a writer navel-gaze before their poetic ramblings become little more than unattractive narcissism? And just when, exactly, does healthy introspection sour into tedious self-indulgence? These are judgements I shall leave for others to make. Because, having spent five years crafting sentences from emotions pulled kicking and screaming into the light, my sense of literary balance is well and truly dulled.

Writing a book such as this is difficult, and I have battled endlessly over the amount of personal detail that needs to be shared. I would describe this process as being similar to instigating an extraordinarily embarrassing conversation about things you’d rather not discuss, with strangers who may not be in the slightest bit interested in anything you have to say.

I’ve heard it said that you never finish writing a book. You just decide, at some point, that it’s time to put the pen down. I have reached that place, and I am as happy as I’ll ever be that I have told my truth in the best way I can. It’s time now to submit my tale of life, love, autism, and all the other complicated stuff I really didn’t want to talk about—but have, anyway.