You ever think, "Damn, that b*tch is crazy!"

...and then realize ‘that b*tch’ is you? 😆

My definition of crazy changed during my first tour in a psychiatric ward, age 16, 1997.

In my young and simple mind, I didn’t belong here with these crazy people. All my life I was well-behaved and stayed in line... eh... disappearing in size now, but still passably normal when I managed to get out of bed and attend school.

But now I'd really done it. Locked down without family or familiars... My minutes to be portioned out; when and how much I eat, sleep, wake, go to the bathroom, shower, attend group or take medication; by someone who'd likely pigeon the whole of me. Forget to consider the real of me.

And what someone who's never been in this position doesn't realize is that without any bad cells attacking, viruses, infections or broken limbs; essentially I am [seen as] the problem. My participation in treatment is required, yet, I have been deemed mentally ill and my perspective is not to be trusted. So, upon involuntary admission, I now get to experience a mere step into the pool of what it feels like to be seen as crazy.

My roommate, Helen, 13 years old, 3 times my size, appears vastly different from me--unkempt and out of control. (My brain obviously hard at work highlighting all that makes me different; all that serves to confirm that I do not belong here.) When Helen's anger is triggered, she could clear all of the tables in the room in one fell swoop and then proceed in the upturning of all that is nearby, until restrained.

I had been exposed to my fair share of angry people and tended to freeze in the presence of outbursts. However, I had (and have) yet to be aware of the depths of my own anger, as I wear it so discretely; laced through my throat, lining my heart and cellophane wrapping entire pieces of my being. Suffocating my access to Source. Needless to say, I didn’t see common ground between us, didn't trust her or want to be around her and definitely didn’t feel safe sharing a room with her.

That night, while I was busy being trapped in the naked of unfamiliar, in fear... I began to hear a voice soft and sweet, "I love you. I love you. Sweet dreams. Sleep tight. I'll always love you." Helen was acknowledging each and every one of her stuffed animals, listening to their experiences that day and tenderly reassuring them of her love while tucking them in. No doubt treating them all the way that she'd always wished she'd been treated. Perhaps offering them what she believed she wasn't worthy of sharing, human-to-human. What in the childmind of her believed was not for her and never could be... I look away from the screen now because it is a feeling I know well... not for me.

It was a sweetness I couldn’t have imagined in the whole I had pigeoned as a beast. Seeing our shared human experience, our sameness, right before my [minutes ago unseeing] eyes.... What came to life in me that evening was awareness that we all want the same thing. To love and to be loved. And that we are forever joined in this way. As if seeing Love for the first time, the perimeter of my being bowed in humility, blurred and fell away, along with my sense of separate.

As my time went on there, I heard people saying aloud exactly what it was they were thinking. Not posturing or selectively presenting the way we did in my “normal” high school and life settings. When we sat around the table, mixed ages, mixed challenges; we were like a family, but without the herd of elephants in the room... the covering up of the less than. In group it was as though one person was as “crazy” as the next. So we were free to share who we were, who we had been; even if it wasn’t who we should've been or who we wanted to be.

There is a freedom with expression and acceptance... though some may think it’s encouraging of dysfunction. If you begin to see yourself as ok, you begin to see yourself as not needing of dysfunctional antics. Shifting instead toward, I am worthy, lovable and enough. I am struggling and so is everyone else. I need not self-destruct, drink the blood of others, respond explosively, starve, puke, drink, drug, strive for perfection... you name it. I need not walk around feeling alone, separate, hopeless, helpless or like I am just a dud, somehow made wrong and shipped out accidentally.

So I no longer believe that I am not crazy or that it is exceptional to be crazy, to feel crazy, or to roam in and out of varying manifestations of energy. I still feel crazy at times, in the derogatory and misfit sense of the word; rather than the burning with life and wide open skies, unpredictable and powerful sense of the word. But there is something of comfort and Truth that has never left, in knowing that we are all the same at the level of substance. Capable of remembering and returning to One.

*Obviously roommate's name is not actually Helen.

*Also obvious that I am a weirdo... who would pose with Christmas tree angel sock monkey, Sven?