Once Upon a Time in My Oceania

The ability to claim normalcy probably disappeared the day I came into this world screaming my baby lungs out. I was number ten of an ever-growing family, with older siblings years my senior. It's a safe bet "normal" continued to elude me with my childhood mainly isolated as a homeschooled kid. There were rare encounters with other children my age with the few times I wandered to my small town's park to play with a handful of kids who were either getting their education at home, similar to me, or a few others who played hookie from the public school some miles away. The majority of interaction was due to my connections to my fundamentalist community though. Church was the center of my life; everything revolved around it. You can pretty much kiss "normal" goodbye when something that controlling is what your life mostly consists of. Making things more difficult was the fact I knew how odd I appeared to others. I lost count of how many times I was asked b