Letting Go of Crazy

I. Sunday Morning, Upon Waking Alone and Thus Not Distracted.

What do you do
When it hurts to move
But if you don't move
It'll just hurt more
And you'll eventually
Never move

Again?

What do you do
When pain pills kill you
But if you don't find an alternative
You'll grow crippled
And eventually
Die
Anyway?

(repeated overdoses leading to lethal allergy  -- bittersweet irony, embrace of lethargy)


How do you find the energy to run
When the energy to walk eludes you?
How do you explain that you are rotting,
You are atrophying yourself
Forty feet above the street
In a crumbling rented playhouse?
How do you explain to others
That you just may be slowly killing yourself

(albeit lazily and without any conscious and direct intention)

As you crawl away from society
As you hide from the light
As you accept the seizing of organs and joints
You are ashamed

You are so

Ashamed.

II. I Hate This Part. Disney Movies Have Poisoned Me And Fucked With Life Expectations.

If I don't call you and you don't call me
It must mean it wasn't meant to be

Anyway.

 I have proved the world right;
In this model it is you,

Never me.

But then,
No.

It's both of us
in this dance of dysfunction.

Me, being the Ursula, the disgusting sea-witch
(and thus obviously not deserving of love)
And you being the Asshole Prince
Who won't even try to peer past
The supposed evil and ugliness.
Who'd never attempt to kiss a toad
Just to see if a princess would appear.

Where oh where has Ariel gone?

I used to have red hair, too.
But it wasn't the same.
It never was the same.

I'm more Sylvia than Walt.
More Plath than Disney.

(Something else
Hauls me through air ---
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.)

I find joy in being right;
That it is you who is unfair and unloving.
Obviously I am not worthy
Of attempts to slay dragons
And struggles through briers and thorns
To rescue me in my castle tower

(Does anyone know her real name
Was Aurora?)

No, indeed it is proof;
It is logic and irrefutable fact
That I am no sleeping beauty
And I can dream myself quietly
Into gentle, un-fettered death
Undisturbed by attempts
At resuscitation.

It appears that it is fate.

A happily ever after. 

III. I Am A Masochist And A Sadist. I Like the Color of My Own Blood and the Taste of My Own Tears.

Perhaps I am an ugly creature.
Perhaps I am a sloth, a mole woman,
A warted witch.
Perhaps I am best suited for dark internal rooms.
Perhaps there is reason why nature has
Declared me not suited to breed

(If only by omission and not biology.)

Depression and self-loathing are nature's way;
It's neo-Darwinism.
My species has no place for party poopers -
Only the happy and well adjusted survive.

And let's face it, I'm not the best specimen anyway.

I'll turn in my womb and ovaries
my badge, my revolver,
my bullets
with this letter of resignation.

IV. Self-pity Parties Are the Cheapest to Throw and Saves You Hundreds of Dollars in Catering Costs.

I turn back into myself
I waddle and huddle
Into my cave with the view.

I am retreating from all that I want and love
And for the life of me
I don't know why.

I am thirty and arthritic;
I am thirty and obese.
I am insulated and safe
And eventually life will leave me alone
With its disappointments and pedestals
And other high places I can no longer place others
Only to watch them fall and roll away.


V. A Reflection Due to a Lack of Objective Mirrors. With an Acceptance of Distortion.

Go away.

I will run from you;
I will hop a city bus.

My motus operandi
Is to hide and to be the center of attention
At the same time.

My own paparazzi
My own shampoo-bottle Oscar speech.

I don't take photos
Of myself anymore

The pills that have half-helped
Leave me bloated, thin-eyebrowed, and
Still probably damaged goods.

I still play Guyville on never-ending loops
I listen to the music of my youth
because I want to be

mesmerizing,

too.


VI. A Review of Conditions, Disorders, Medications, and Attempts to Diagnose and Pinpoint Reasons Why I Am Not Responsible for My Own Self.

So many labels I have tried on.
They never fit; they curl and split,
Tear and crumple.
As if one term can explain all that is Janice
And one reading of the DSM-IV can find the cure.

Can it be Effexor, Depakote, Topomax,
Paxil, Celexa, Klonopin, or Xanax?

And how do I get off and how do I get on?

Serotonin syndrome
Withdrawal syndrome
Suicidal crisis
Black box warnings

And me spending the early part of my twenties
On cliff edges with no FDA advice or knowledge
And no doctor's notes to sit this drama out.

I have embraced crazy,
creative,
poetic,
different,
chaotic,
tortured,
misunderstood
for far too long

To properly see that  they are excuses,
not personality.

Thirty years of chicken or the egg.

Is it my thyroid? Is it my parents? Is it genetics?
Why so fat so early?
Was it emotional abuse on the playground?
Are my classmates to blame
Or the gym teachers who forced me to run
And balance my bulk on gymnastic beams?

Borderline,
Bipolar,
Depressed,

Eating Dis*ordered,

Crazy,
Agoraphobic,
Obsessive Compulsive,
Emotionally Unavailable,

Emotionally Unstable,
Habitual Liar,

Spinster,
Self-Medicator,
Binge Eater,

Post Traumatic Stressed

Weak,
Pathetic,
Bruised,
Bleeding,
Chronic,
Hopeless.

Unstable.

Warning. Do not enter. Do not pass go.

Do not collect two hundred dollars.

Approach with Caution. Unpredictable.  Volatile.

Check any applicable symptoms.

Be aware of any potential side effects.


Please sign here, you have been informed.


VII. Here Is The Part Where I'm Going to Scream. I Might Even Curse. Bear With Me, Gentle Reader.

Look at me.

You, hey you, mother fucker!


Look at ME.

Buy a book, support a true artist.
I am entitled, you see, I have suffered
And thus I deserve your attention
And your money, your penance.

Please.
Please.
Pretty please?
With my cherry on top?

You see.

You must
Understand that

I hate you
.
I fucking hate you.

You read my words and say you understand.
You read my words and say I helped  save you.

I can't even save myself when the flood flashes

Nakedness brought freedom
then it just brought cold.

I hate you. 

I am fighting demons you can't see
And thus I am important and raw and

DAMNIT

I have something crucial to say
That you
That YOU
Could NEVER understand.

Look at me.

I am better than you
Because I am vulnerable and

Did I mention raw?

I am talented and memorable and
(please please please don't forget me)
I am bad genetics, I am bad environment,
I am malnutrition, I am a memorandum
Of psychopharmacudical pamphlets,
I am simply a product of rape, cruelty, of
a society that doesn't love me.

Bulk up. I’m worth it.

I need you to save me. Carry me. I am heavy.

(Run away.  Seriously.  Turn around and run.  Get out while you can.  Run.)

Nothing will ever be enough.
You can never be enough.

It's like what the boys used to say about me in grade school.  If you're nice to me, I'll just start to like you.  I might even love you.  Who the hell wants to deal with that?

Run.

I am an imploding star

(I'm just going to fuck this up, too)

A black hole that sucks the air from your lungs

(Shit, I can't breathe.)

I am a car accident about to happen

(Get the fuck out of here!)

It is inevitable that I will crash and burn

(I can't lose you, too.  I can't keep losing people.  I can't deal with this.  I can't deal with me.  Please just leave me alone!")

I will be spectacular, a fucking cosmic event

(Get the fuck out of here!)

And you

Will

NOTICE.

baby please come back.  I'm so sorry.  I didn't mean it.  please. 
please don't leave me alone, too.



VII. I'm Sorry, You See It's Not My Fault. In Fact, Nothing's My Fault. You see, I....

I am incapable;
I am a writhe-some, fucking anomaly.

The doctors told me,
They assured me when I was locked away,
When I was twenty-three and institutionalized,

They told me

it's not my fault.

I am fucked up DNA.  A misfit toy. 

And back, at nineteen
My first psychiatrist
During my first mind-fuck
Proclaimed me "chronic" and forever diseased

It tasted bittersweet.

I imagined Angelina Jolie
In Girl, Interrupted.

I pictured Elizabeth Wurtzel
Naked and beautiful on Prozac Nation.

I can be a rock star at this.

I can be an amazing insane,
Perpetually falling star.

Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven
Her nails perfectly manicured,
Not a hair out of place.

I can do that.

And I can be gorgeous
And luminous
An idol. Mysterious. A Marilyn.

I can do this.

Thank you for this role.
I am ready to perform.

I take direction very well -
Always take the drugs I am handed.

I don’t want to be the fat girl anymore.

Crazy suits me just fine.


VIII. New Perspective Spoken by an Older Lover Who Has a Good Eye for Such Things.

"You have issues with growing up."

I laugh. I say I was menstruating at eight.
I was wearing a bra on the playground.
I have an apartment, I pay my own rent.
I have lived in New York City
On ten thousand fucking dollars a year
At age twenty-two.

I am an adult, my license proves it -
Thirty years old this past March.
I have the scars to tell.
I am responsible and independent
and quite capable, thankyouvermuch.

I am in a union, buddy, and have
a hundred thousand dollar education.

We walk in silence,

Cross Manhattan Avenue.

I consider a past boyfriend who'd accuse
Me of manipulation
Of crying instead of talking and screaming
Instead of communicating

You're a fucking child!
A bratty, immature, emotionally crippled child.

I'd act out more
I'd slam my head into walls
Bruise my hands and brain
and use that as proof that
I was just "troubled"

I'm sick of being sick, I said five years ago.
But I never grew sick of talking about it.
I never took off the hospital ID bracelet
Or burned my certificate of insane

Two more blocks
I say, "please don’t call me a woman."

I say this to the first man who’s held me
To the first non-boy to sleep in my bed
Nearly forty, balding, settled, stable, loving

Part of me wants to start a fight,
And I do.

And eventually, he leaves me, too.

"You're a beautiful vase, sweetheart.
But only held together by masking tape
and Elmer's glue,"
he says. 


IX. The Ties That Bind, The Ties That Bind.

Oh bravado
You anorexic model
All shimmy and strut
In other people’s clothes.

One hundred pounds of makeup and hunger
Balanced on six-inch stiletto heels.

The ties that bind
This mind of mine
The razor wire around my heart
Just won’t let me go.

Persephone by the wrist
Lead back into hell

Persephone by the wrist
Dragged back screaming

I find I can say, “I’m afraid”
But not, “I’m sure the end is near.”

With swollen tongue, I assure you with lies
That I don’t think it’s the end of time
Without it sounding like a threat.

Cooled down to corpse temperature
I practice rotting, my rigor mortis pose
Each breath, a rose to inhale
The scent of dead flowers in stale apartment air
I forget when I am well
how I am
when I am not.

The thorns I grow that keeps you away.

I forget I am a dog licking its wounds
And planning to crawl into a hole to fade.

So many years spent pissed off that no one would save me and
I wouldn’t let them if they tried.


X.                  Epilogue.  Epitaph.  Sylvia Plath.

My aim is not to scar,
No intention to maim or harm.

Just to tie my life with a bow,
Seal it with a kiss,
And call it a night.

I have let go of crazy
Waved to Hades, said goodbye
But crazy has not let go of me.

You can take the girl out of the black
But not the black out of the girl.

As they’ll say, they’ll say.

It was bound to happen
that she'd take her own life
one day.

I pull on my pajamas,
A glass of water by my bed.
I read for a while, I watch some tv.
The exhaustion allows little thought
And much less reconsideration.

Do I dare
Do I dare
Do I dare disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time for revisions and decisions which a minute will reverse

So I must hurry now,
Before the minute,
The seven,
Passes.

Before the stars un-align

Before I allow myself
to Remember You.


XI.  Letting Go Of Crazy.

Habits die hard.

Cigarette butts hidden in drawers
Stale but safe, there if needed.

Sometimes I just want to puff.
Nicotine. Getting mean. Staying clean.

Perhaps it's time to seal my juvenile record

Pack away my Liz Phair cds and
Wear long sleeved shirts
Put away childish razors.

Stop drinking myself to amnesia,
stop running from one stranger's bed to another
trying to recapture the girl
unraped.
The girl unscathed.

This world owes me nothing
Despite my shoulders, so deeply chipped.

If ten years in New York
can't jade me, nothing can.

Despite the broken hearts,
love really never has
torn me apart.

When I can't move,
when I can't think,
when I am too blinded to blink
I still can breathe
and that's enough for me.

I am refusing to drink the Kool-Aid
That I so routinely spike.

I am letting go of crazy.











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