Things I've always ended with 'Is it just me?'
When I was in elementary school.
Whenever it rained while I was at school,
for some reason, everyone around me had an umbrella.
But I never had one.
Checking the weather forecast and bringing an umbrella.
That idea never even occurred to me.
So every time, I would go home soaking wet.
That was my
'normal for a rainy day'.
Was I the only one who thought this was normal?
Have you ever thought that?
I had always thought that when you have a head cold,
your face is supposed to hurt.
When my nose was stuffed up, the area around my eyes and cheekbones would ache.
I never doubted that this was normal.
In the first place, the idea of 'going to the hospital for a cold' didn't exist for me.
So, until I became an adult,
I thought everyone felt the same way: 'Head cold = face hurts'.
I thought that.
But even when I casually said to someone,
'Your face hurts when you have a head cold, right?',
the reaction was lukewarm.
Every time that happened, I felt a little 'Huh?', a lingering sense of discomfort.
One time, a friend said they were going to the hospital for a cold.
'Wait? You go to the hospital for a cold?'
When I asked that,
'It's cheaper to go to the hospital than to buy over-the-counter medicine,' they replied,
as if it were obvious.
That was when I first realized.
That there were 'options I didn't have' within me.
The next time I caught a head cold,
I went to an otolaryngologist for the first time.
Then the doctor told me,
'Your nasal passage is a bit crooked, so you have acute sinusitis.'
'Oh?'
Come to think of it, the pain in my face was always on the left side.
Since it had been that way since I was little,
I had just assumed it was a regular cold.
But that was not
'everyone's normal'.
The me back then didn't know.
Checking the weather forecast to bring an umbrella,
or the option of going to the hospital for a cold.
Now, I can do both as a matter of course.
It's such a simple thing, but
I feel like I took such a long detour just because I didn't know.
I want to tell the me from back then.
'That's sinusitis.
And by the way, bring an umbrella.'
I'm sure there are still things like that for me now.
Things I'm convinced are normal.
Don't you have them too?