Next to Normal

Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound;
and the more that it is bound the less it is blind.

—G. K. Chesterton

I saw Next to Normal last weekend. It’s truly not your typical musical, and while I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, I found it touching and thought provoking. As I reflect on it, I’m struck by the realness of it. The characters are flawed, the situations are complicated, and everyone is simply doing the best they can, often with less than ideal results. While I think I’d have to listen to the soundtrack at least 10 more times to really feel like I have a handle on the whole thing, I did want to share one reaction I had to the play.

First, you need a bit of background. The story involves a family who appear at first to be a perfectly normal suburban family – football practice, school lunches, piano recitals – but you soon learn the mother is dealing with some serious mental illness, which has been exacerbated by the death of her young son. And her illness is taking a toll on the family. While the mother is wrapped up in her grief, the daughter does everything she can think of to been seen and the father tries to make everything “ok” again.

I found myself intrigued by the father of the family. He is helpful and supportive of his wife as she goes through various treatments. And while he makes it clear he doesn’t completely understand her illness, he is not unkind or remotely resentful.

Through the beginning of the second half, I kept thinking of this quote from G. K. Chesterton: “Love is not blind ...; love is bound.” Love is committed, even when the loved one is flawed (because, really, aren’t we all?) This husband is certainly bound to his wife. He knows her faults, and deals (rather well, I thought) with the stress they cause. At one point, she asks him why he stays. And he responds, basically, that he loves her, or that he loved her, and wants to find that girl he loves again. And also, and this is key, a boy makes a promise. He sings:

A promise a boy says forever
A boy says whatever may come, we’ll come through ...
And the man has forgotten his reasons

But the man still remembers his vow ...
Knowing one day we'd remember that joy

You'd remember that girl
I'd remember that boy till we do
The promise I made, I'll make it brand new.
A promise that I made to you.

You see. He made a promise. He is bound. And I had to admire him for understanding and acting on that fact. While their life is far from ideal, they seem to get that part right.

But here’s the thing. Toward the end of the show, she leaves him. And it made absolutely no sense to me. I couldn’t understand it – until she sang this:

With you always beside me
To catch me when I fall
I'd never get to know the feel
Of solid ground at all
With you always believing
That we can still come through
It makes me feel the fool
To know that it's not true

And you know, she’s right. The support he has given her, and even the way he's given it, may not have really been what she needed. It was what he could give, but it was not right.

And yet, he was not wrong.

I’ll admit that I’m a bit invested in believing he’s not wrong because I really do see myself in him. But in the end, for both of them, there is no blame, no “if you had only,” no anger. Just a simple fact. They both have done their best in a very difficult situation – done all they can do – and it isn’t enough. They’re both right, and they’re both wrong. And this ambiguity is what makes this play resonate for me. The world so often not at all black and white, not "I'm right and you're wrong." Instead we all do our best to love and to help and to make things better, doing what we believe is best at the time, even in situations where there is no definitive solution.