KARMA SPEAKS

AM I DYSFUNCTIONAL?

BY DENISE “KARMA” CLIFFORD

Am I really as dysfunctional as the label you have given me? The meaning of dysfunctional is as follows: deviating from the norms of social behavior in a way regarded as bad.

I suppose in ways according to the definition one could say yes. Although then that means I’m a bad person pertaining to society’s views. I can agree I’ve never fit into the peg grooves as easily as others.I’ve most times felt the sting of not being included. Once as a child, new to a school in 3rd grade as I sat next to a new friend on a bus coming home from a field trip, the little girl looked at her mom who was a chaperone. She asked if she could invite me over, and as the mother looked over at me, looked me up and down, and whispered something into her daughter’s ears, I learned how cruel society was. I never went to her house, and she never sat with me or talked to me as a friend again. Was I considered dysfunctional and bad then, because I had old boys clothes on, or I was not up to her standards? I never forgot that moment, things like that stick with you and embed themselves into your mind, the mind that never stops analyzing what you have done or said. My choices have been derived from at times irrational thoughts and a personality disorder that had been undiagnosed for the majority of my life. Yet I don’t consider myself to be “bad.” I’m not one of the bad guys. What I find most disturbing about the fact that I have had the finger pointed at me and ridiculed for being dysfunctional is also the question of who sets the “norms” of society? Or is it perception based on opinion of what normal is to you personally? For whatever reason, I don’t agree. I may be different than you, or have different views and habits or

behaviors, but deep down I’m extremely functional, and good.

What makes people functional in your eyes? Is it having the “normal” appearance while outside looking in, or is it the stability claimed of a career that has basically sucked the existence from one’s soul? Or that white picket fence around the bones of skeletons caged within the boundaries of what it is you see deemed as being in the good peoples club. I beg to differ at what makes a person good or bad, I suppose. Does divorce make people bad? Sometimes it makes the people better. Better for not remaining in a toxic situation.

Maybe that’s where I’m dysfunctional as I raised my children in separate households as their fathers. Maybe because my 3 kids have 2 different dads. But hear this, it was functional. And there is no divorce that begins pretty. But I wouldn’t say that the aftermath was enough to call me dysfunctional. I maintained a home, and an in house career. I managed children, and sometimes through the child’s eyes was the “bad guy” as consequences for actions were a mothers job. I had to let go of one of my children who wanted to go be with his father as a teenager in another state. Not a decision that came lightly mind you, but one that almost broke my heart. You see even states away his father and I communicated, making it possible to still be an active father, even through distance.

So when he wanted to go there for the school year and with me the summers, I couldn’t do what I selfishly wanted to do, and say no. So I let him go. Maybe that’s the dysfunctional part. Am I bad for letting him go? Or the fact that my ex husband bought a house down the street from me, and we constructed a schedule that fit his, mine and the kids

“The meaning of dysfunctional is as follows: deviating from the norms of social behavior in a way regarded as bad.”

lives and stuck to it. We made sure our kids knew whose house they were at when, and communicated if we needed a day or time to change. We worked together, we functioned. There were bad times, but it didn’t make any of us a bad person. I didn’t live inside the views of society’s norms, but who really does?

I’ve learned a lot about appearances throughout my abnormal life, and one is that if it looks perfect there’s something hidden behind that pristine appeal. I’ve also learned that society’s image also means a little bit of brain washed propaganda to make you think your better than someone else, because of what you portray to be. Yet deep down, you are screaming inside to be the person you can’t. Maybe you truly hate living in that house, with that person, but do it because it’s normal. Yet Inside you yearn for something more. To be noticed more, appreciated more or loved more.

Or maybe you hate your job, and feel like you can’t leave because the risk of losing your identity based on the status would be too disappointing. But disappointing to who? I don’t know who makes these bars that other people believe you must reach, but whoever they are maybe they need to look internally before pointing and casting judgements. I bet they battle demons way bigger than the ones I lay out on the table. My failures are not evil, and I am not bad. The best successes in my life have come after what you deem a failure.

Maybe I’m not what you want me to be, but I’m much better than being a