Next to Normal

Next to Normal, is a musical about a family who tries to live a “normal” life while having a family member diagnosed with a mental illness. Diana, the mother, lost her son at 8 months old and was never able to accept the death of her son. She continues to establish a relationship with her son, Gabe, acting as if he was still alive.  It’s been eighteen years and she’s the only family member who can see and hear him. The father, Dan, tries to help Diana by sending her to multiple doctors who prescribe her with different medications to try and cure her illness. Nothing seems to work and at one point she tries to commit suicide. Meanwhile her daughter, Natalie, is tired of being “invisible” because she feels that her mother doesn’t acknowledge her presence and she feels that her mother would rather have Gabe alive. While Dan continues looking for ways to cure Diana, he encounters a doctor that persuades him to try electro shock therapy. Diana gets tested and she forgets about Gabe until she starts remembering what happened the day he died. She’s overwhelmed with the new information she just learned and believes it’s time for a new beginning. Diana leaves Natalie and Dan behind, where all three of them hope to start over fresh.

              The part that stood out to me the most was when Diana tells Natalie “I love you as much as I can” because I feel like this is an important part of their relationship. Natalie is positive that her mother prefers Gabe over her and if Diana had the opportunity to bring Gabe back she would. I feel like Natalie is selfish in a way because she wants to have a normal life and wants her mother to be someone she can’t. Diana is pressured by Dan and Natalie to be the best wife and mother when she doesn’t really know who she is.  Dan is taking her to different doctors who are prescribing her different medications to try and make her better, but they don’t know how she really feels. So when Diana tells Natalie that she loves her, what she’s trying to say is that even though she can’t be the “ideal” mother she loves her in the way she can and knows how to. When Diana is scheduled to go through electro shock therapy Natalie says that she “cried for all we’d never be”, I feel like this is where Natalie understands that her mom is never going to be okay, not even with all the therapy and medications, and she doesn’t want to lose her trying to change her. Later she says, “I don’t need a life that’s normal, but something… next to normal.” At this point Natalie understands who her mother is and she’s willing to accept her for the way she is.  
            
           After reading, Next to Normal, I feel like Diana hadn’t dealt with the death of her son in the right way and that incident affected her for the rest of her life. I feel like sometimes we are to quick to jump to conclusions without allowing others to express what they really feel. We force them do to things they aren’t comfortable with or don’t want to do and at the end of the day we push them away. And once we have pushed people away we realize what we’ve lost. I now believe that sometimes you just need to be there for that person and accept them with their best qualities and with their flaws because you don’t know what they have been through.
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