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)

How do you find the energy to run
When the energy to walk alludes 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
And 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
And I have proved the world right
In this model it is you
It is never me

But then no.
It is both of us.
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
and 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 that is unfair and unloving
but also that 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 facts
that i am no sleeping beauty
and I can dream myself quietly
into gentle, un-fettered death
undisturbed by attempts
at resuscitation

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)

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

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
and 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
becaase 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 get out of life

I have embraced crazy, creative, poetic, different, chaotic, tortured, misunderstood for so long
to properly see 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 class mates 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
Spinster, Self-Medicator, Binge Eater, Post Traumatic Stressed

Unstable. Warning. Do not enter. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars
Approach with Caution. Unpredictable. 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.

Hey you, hey you, mother fucker!

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.

Understand that I hate you.
I fucking hate you.
But ....
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.

And 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.

Nothing will ever be enough.
You can never be enough
I am an imploding star
a black hole that sucks the air from your lungs
I am a car accident about to happen

It is inevitable that I will crash and burn

I will be spectacular, a fucking cosmic event
And you
will
NOTICE.


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 writhesome, 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 was not my fault

and back, at nineteen
my first psychiatrist
during my first mind-fuck
proclaimed me "chronic" and forever diseased

i never forgot.

it's my excuse for everything.

i never was one to question authority.
i was always took the drugs i was handed
my mother raised a good, polite girl
that understood her place
and rarely ever thought for herself

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 dollars a year
I am an adult, my licence proves it
I have the scars to tell
I am responsible and independent and quite capable
I am in a union, buddy, and have a hundred thousand dollar education

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"
he'd say and I'd act out more, I'd slam my head into walls
bruise my hands and head and use that as proof that i am just "troubled"

I'm sick of being sick, I said five years ago.
But I never grew sick of talking about it.

And I never took off the hospital ID bracelet

Perhaps at thirty, it's time to seal my juvenile record
Pack away my Liz Phair cds and wear long sleeved shirts
put away childish razors
and stop drinking myself to amnesia

This world owes me nothing
despite my shoulders, so deeply chipped

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

I am letting go of crazy