I remembered something else I meant to post:
I’m not too crazy to work. I produced more on Tuesday than anyone else in my department. It’s safe to say I produced more than double the next-highest-producing person’s output that day, and it was such a bad day for me that I felt I needed to take the next five days off work. And today was fine at work, and even on my “days off” I produced more than I had in the month before on my novel, actually finishing it last night. I’m not too crazy to work.
I’m not too crazy to love. Love is just … difficult, and life doubly so, and the intersection of these is often frought with trouble. I still love. I still care. I still want only the best for those I love, and am willing to sacrifice my own satisfaction to do what I can to work for that. And worse than that, my love is not dependent upon reciprocation or contact. I keep checking 1 Corinthians 13, and it doesn’t say anything about being together or anything of the sort. Patient, kind, doesn’t envy, doesn’t boast, isn’t proud, isn’t rude, isn’t self-serving, isn’t easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, does not delight in evil, rejoices with the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, never fails. I’m not too crazy to do (or at least to strive to do) and be those things. I may have made a mis-step or two, but I do my best. I’m not too crazy to love.
I’m not a danger to myself or others. I never really threatened to take any actions that would have caused any actual harm to anyone. I never intended even to cause any psychological or emotional harm for her or her son, let alone any physical or lasting harm. I am not aware of having put her or her son in any physical danger, and save from potential violence against me by the people around her, I am not aware of having put myself in any physical danger, either. At my most threatening, I was raising my voice, over the phone, asking questions, trying to understand what had happened; still just seeking the truth, even at my worst. I love her too much to want to see her come to harm because of me, now or ever. And I’ve long loved myself too much to actually try to hurt myself, to try to kill myself. My final suicide attempt came in 1999; I suppose that was a year of dropping bad habits. I have more than enough strength of character to keep myself on a safe path, for myself and for those I care about. I am not a danger to myself, and I am not a danger to others.
And if that’s what it takes to be crazy, I guess I’m not as crazy as I thought I was. And if I’m not as crazy as I thought I was, maybe you really are crazier than me. Are you a danger to yourself, a danger to others, too crazy to love, and/or to crazy to work?
There’s another quip I like to tell about being crazy, it goes like this:
Hearing voices isn’t crazy. Lots of people hear voices.
Talking back to the voices in your head isn’t crazy, either.
It’s when you get into physical fights with the voices in your head that you know for sure you’ve lost it.
— Fight Club became a beautiful visual display of this quip, long after I’d been saying it.
