I’ve been thinking about women I’ve known. Crazy ones. Really crazy ones, though I concede that the definition of loony tunes is in the eye of the beholder. And the ear. And the aftermath of all kinds of wild whims and what-have-you.
We who have known you (oh Crazies) salute you!
Not.
We wear the war wounds of your heinous hits aimed through soft hide and tender tissues. We try to decipher your wacky words, baffling behaviors, and all-round inexplicably odd interactions. Your affinity for power. Or is it narcissism?
I suppose I’m musing on this topic because a friend referred to someone close to him – a woman – as crazy. I disagreed, and said she was impaired in specific ways, for reasons that he was aware of.
Maybe the term is tottering on the tip of my tongue because I’m feeling a little crazy myself these days, or more likely, because of my teenage sons and their friends, and the fickle flitting of females in and out of their adolescent love lives – to whit – they shake their heads, shoot me a befuddled glance, and mutter under their breath: crazy women.
Recently, someone said I was crazy like a fox, which I took as a compliment. Naturally, that could imply a capacity for strategy and smarts, but also for ruse; I only wish I were so fortunate.
My Life With Crazy
When I think of crazy?
I see my own flaky familial tree, and I visualize my mother – the manic moods and rages, the all too insistent laughter, the sobbing from some unreachable depths that nonetheless pierced my sensibilities with guilt simply for being present, and the intensity of a brilliant mind through all of it.
Crazy.
Of course, to men, crazy women are another story – a tale of lumping all females together into a category of incomprehensibility, a process of distancing, of self-protection, of naming and cordoning off – or so it seems to me, when you have no words or tools to bridge the gap.
And then there’s crazy beautiful with all the privileges that go with it, including hurling hurt and exerting power – as long as beauty remains within your grasp.
There’s crazy in the head and crazy in bed; the former a dismissal and the latter, let’s face it – generally desirable, though it may fall into the category of “enjoy it, but don’t marry it.”
There’s crazy-emotional and crazy-making, and one might say that’s the sexual factor at play again, and the dance of demons that lands us squarely in the cyclone of passive-aggressive relationships. And as for that one, two can gamble on that galling game; there are plenty of crazy-making men on this planet.
Your Kind of Crazy?
Maybe you’re married to crazy, and you like it. Your woman keeps you guessing, remains slightly elusive, is unpredictable. (Not so easy when you reach a stage in life where you need to count on someone, but hey – whatever works for you!)
Maybe you’re married to crazy and you didn’t know what you were in for. No, I won’t restrict that to the women, either. And while I’m not in the marital advice biz, I’ll venture to say that it’s tough going when the person you think you married turns out to be someone else entirely.
Maybe you like the crazy woman in yourself – the one defined by spontaneity, by a wandering eye, by a lack of concern for conventional views. And most likely you aren’t crazy at all; “crazy” is a judgmental and relative term, an imprecise term, a designation fraught with cultural subjectivity.
So, any crazies in your life – crazy, by your own definition?
My Crazy Life, My View of Crazy
It’s hard not to find the crazies in the news. Recent headlines on the tragedy in Norway identify the perpetrator as “insane.”
Hello?
How could this massacre be anything else? How can we look around the globe at the state of our world and not deem half of it fucking nuts, and women especially seem to view it all as utterly incomprehensible?
Us, crazy?
I surrender to the logic of the saying that everything is relative. I surrender to the hazy past of a troubled parent and my own determination to siphon the good from her essence, and distance myself from the legacy of damaging behaviors. I surrender to the reality that men and women will never agree on certain topics, will always function differently, will clash and then hopefully regroup and embrace, and this crazy woman’s place is happily whole nonetheless (on a good day), on my own and yet choosing to share with a good man, if I am so lucky – through my juggling jamboree, my monetary meltdowns, my hormonal heat, my sensual seizures and, all the crazy pleasure that may result in the discoveries of each.
The Definition of Crazy
If the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, I plead guilty as often as the next babe – guilty as charged to looking forward, guilty as charged to expecting the best of others, guilty as charged to believing someday I may chase my dreams.
And if women are crazier than men (and might we simply say, we’re processing on other emotional dimensions?), then I’m all for our crazy conniptions, our release of tears or biting tongue, and our ultimate certifiable compassion.
We’re crazy enough to give ourselves to love, crazy enough to go through child-rearing, crazy enough to view the world as still offering a glimmer of hope – stubbornly insisting that we keep going, that if we continue to put ourselves out there – even if out there is in the home, arm around a child, hand offered to a partner, embrace extended to a community – our kind of crazy will meet its match in some appreciative, improbable, unimaginable level of livability. Possibly for all of us.
Crazy notion, huh?
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I said I was crazy the other day. The man told me that “crazy people don’t think that they’re crazy”. Still, sometimes you have got to wonder, right?
I still believe that this place can be better. And you’re right. That is crazy. But I’m just crazy enough to keep on keeping on.
I’m with you on the “keeping on keeping on,” Lindsey. Crazy though it is… 😉
I suspect we all go through those moments of being “crazy”; that is, the crazy that is not a positive term. I also suspect it is more obvious with the female than with the male because typically we’re quicker to show our emotions, to let others know how we feel. That we’re “crazy” angry because you just betrayed me. That we’re “crazy” offensive because someone we love was threatened. I remember such moments when I was younger. There is a benefit to aging; you mellow. Like wine?
Like fabulous wine, Carol.
The first thing that popped in my head was the Patsy Cline/Willie Nelson song, “Crazy.” The words seem to sum it up nicely:
Crazy for feeling so lonely / I’m crazy / Crazy for feeling so blue
I knew / You’d love me as long as you wanted / And then someday /
You’d leave me for somebody new
Worry / Why do I let myself worry / Wond’rin’ / What in the world did I do
Crazy / For thinking that my love could hold you / I’m crazy for tryin’ / Crazy for cryin’ / And I’m crazy / For lovin’ you
Ah, Marie… We always come back to the L-word, don’t we?
Crazy indeed.
In general, I’m pretty even-keeled emotionally, but I am at my “craziest” with those whom I love most. My emotions never run hotter than when dealing with my husband or my kids. Is that a good thing, I wonder? Is my “crazy” a purer expression of who I really am?
And it’s interesting to think about, this idea that women are “crazier” than men. We also seem to be less likely to do things like commit murder or acts of terrorism. Perhaps more men should try “crazy” on for size.
Hear hear!
There is the loose use of the word and a more specific meaning (although still highly imprecise).
Crazy is certainly not all women, obviously. But I have known one intimately – fortunately (or unfortunately) atypical but not unique. In such extreme cases, eventually you have to save the other members of the family from being pulled under. My professional training sometimes connects me with this topic in general conversation, in which case I prefer to say that the individual “has a distorted sense of reality” and avoid the debate over diagnostic categories. It is difficult for children to understand this issue, and it has to be explained as simply and clearly as possible, with lots of opportunities for the child to ask questions and express feelings. Particularly, the goal is for the child to know that what they see is the result of a sickness in the brain of the individual and not an appropriate response to whatever the child may have done. To give this perspective is invaluable.
Good point, Paul. We use the term casually and in so many ways – crazy busy, crazy in love – and we misuse it when describing erratic (or unconventional) behavior that we don’t like or understand. I’m fine with it in conversational language when it’s clear it’s slang, but I don’t care for its application to those who are suffering from specific, real illnesses, when “crazy” does a disservice to what they’re going through. Or, as you say, what they may be putting others through.
And then there’s the expression “mad woman,” and to me, that’s something else again…
I’m always immediately suspicious when anyone says their ex was “crazy.” Crazy before or after dating you? Crazy because you made him/her that way? Because if the person was crazy before, then you’re the crazy one.
I agree with your assessment of hope — in love, in childhood, in ourselves — as crazy. I suppose it is, because the world definitely has plenty of examples of why it won’t work. I choose to be crazy enough to believe it will. 😉
First thought, reading the title? My ex’s second wife, the one he cheated on me with…she is and was all kinds of crazy…
But then I read further, and thought of the movie ‘ The yaya sisterhood’ she done gone crazy.
And then further reading turned that judging finger to point at my own crazy.
I think the others comments are correct in that women may on the surface SEEM more crazy. However we may just be more open to SHARE the crazy.
These days I seem to be crazier than ever. Stresses, changes, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.
I sure would like to be crazy rich! or crazy in love.
Kelly, It’s appropriate to be suspicious re “crazy,” but at the same time be open-minded so as not to jump to blame the healthy partner. “Crazy” folks are not stupid, and they may have much experience with hiding their true feelings/behaviors when it’s helpful for them to do so. You can become this way at any time in life and for a variety of reasons. So there’s much more to it than “Crazy because you made him/her that way? Because if the person was crazy before, then you’re the crazy one.”
Seems like the word crazy is as meaningless as “cool” or “that’s bad” and having whatever meaning someone wishes it to give it.
It’s a good thing that mental health is not restricted to a statistical “normal.” No one wants to be considered that sort of normal — it sounds too uninteresting to folks. Mental health does not require that we be cookie cutter copies. Fran is really unusual/atypical/different, and with good mental health.
Crazy is one of those nondescript terms in our language. Literal craziness implies mental illness. Someone who defies patterns of societal “normalness”, by not following trends or whatever, is a form of crazy to some.
Because of taking a different path than what most have expected of me and because I choose to live somewhat differently than I was raised, my parents, I believe, sometimes think I’m crazy. It’s just me, though…personality is very different from theirs, so are my life experiences.
I think most of the time that we call some crazy is because we don’t understand them, their decisions, their choices because they aren’t our decisions and choices.
Just humble thoughts…call them crazy if you like 🙂
I use the word Crazy most of the time as a compliment. Crazy means not conforming to the norm and the social/cultural expectations. Since there are a lot more rules and restrictions for women, there are, imo, more crazy women than men.
It can be illuminating to know where words come from, so I looked up the etymology. Crazy probably derived from Old Norse word Krasa, which meant shatter. In the 15th century, crazy was extended to mean a breakdown in health, and in the 18th century, with a breakdown in mental health. Perhaps this last coincided with the advent of the industrial revolution. The original sense of broken or crazed into splinters is preserved in the Victorian crazy quilt. Many people take schizophrenic to mean split personality, but it actually means shattered personality. The schizophrenic has a crazy quilt mind. I leave it to you, BLW, to tell us what a daily plate of crazy is.
An old Norse shattering and a Victorian “crazy” quilt. Intriguing combination, Wolf. As for what comprises the daily plate of crazy, isn’t it our continuing conversation – perhaps more along the lines of the colorful and sometimes chaotic quilt?
There is nothing more that offends me than being called crazy. It is how my husband recalls his mother – and not favorably.