Sometimes I think things...

I am crazy. I am not your ordinary, run-of-the mill lunatic nutjob. Putting me in the looney bin won’t help to resolve anything. You can’t solve my problems by putting me through therapy or making me talk to a counselor or feeding me pills that are supposed to regulate my body’s chemistry. Nonetheless, I am crazy. Insane. A perfectly neurotic nut. Somebody you’d duck your head away from when passing in the street, in hopes that I won’t begin asking you questions. You’d never want to actually tell me about your day, or talk about the things you are interested in. A conversation like that with an almost perfect stranger is wrong, strange, and out of place.
I am crazy because I think and feel and react when things happen to me. I am nutty because I get interested in things and people and ask many questions in order to grow and learn and understand. I am insane because I am interested in all art forms (music, painting, theatre, dancing, etcetera) and strive to create beauty myself. I am deranged because I believe in the possibility of the triumph of the human condition and that people really are not all that bad. I am batty because I have faith and hope in each and every person I meet and want us to forget our petty differences and get along so that each of us can share the unique gifts we have with each other. I am crazy because I dream. I am crazy because I believe. I am crazy because I love.
I desire so much and yet ask for so little from others. I can see a world of possibility in a drop of water or a fragment of simple truth. The world poses no real threat to me; I am bright and strong and successful, yet I fear what it has in store for my future. I have powerful hopes and dreams, which I intend to pursue, but out of apprehension, I pretend I have a very practical backup plan, in case shrewd eyes see through my coolly confident exterior. My life has been relatively simple so far, yet I treat every event as a separate chapter, feeling and thinking and reacting and cataloging, saving the truths and the pains for the inevitable repeat of history. My friend once said, “Arraine, you don’t like what is happening because it isn’t interesting enough for you,” and she was right. I like take an event, slosh it around in my brain, utter some words about it, emote for a bit, and then tuck it away. When there’s no sloshing or emoting to be done, I’m quite at a loss for what to do with what’s left.
Another friend accused me of acting as a martyr, of taking the weight of the world on my shoulders and carrying somebody else’s burden. I like to help, to nurture, to hold and to care for. I feel that it allows me to hold on to the same fundamental level of sanity that keeps me from being an ordinary nutcase. But according to society, taking on somebody else’s problems is not my duty, and in turn, the fact that I do it proves that I am, in fact, crazy. My brain ticks through the shortcomings of the world and the people around me right along with my own. I have concern for global issues but am not quite ready to address them more than timidly in my day-to-day life. Meanwhile, I foster the children of idle brains and encourage life as we know it to carry on through abnormal, tragic, or fascinating interruptions in our daily paradigms.
Call me crazy. I dare you. Usually I will reply with a quick, “Thank you!” and a sugary-sweet smile, but you’d never know what’s going on in my head: Is she okay? Is she going to be okay? Does my insanity frighten her? Is there really something wrong with me, or was she referring to a more endearing form of crazy? Can she help me? Can I help her? How close am I to discovering something new about her? Does she really belong in my life? Does she belong in my future? How many people think I’m crazy…? And it is not likely you will ever know. It is not particularly likely that I will ever understand all of what is flickering through my gray matter. This is all of course, because I am crazy. I think. I feel. I love. I hope. I dream. I live. I am human.