It's a word I use a lot when I blog...and I'm finding out that it can definitely rub people the wrong way. It's not my intent, I just don't have another word to sum up what I'm trying to say sometimes. I'll blame the English vocabulary.
But, really.
In some conversations lately I'm recognizing how many people associate negativity with the word 'crazy', while oftentimes I'm not necessarily trying to make it a negative thing.
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| Balut: A Filipino delicacy consisting of a developing duck embryo that's boiled alive and eaten in shell. you'd have to be crazy to eat that, right?! |
day long Adventure Races. Crazy can mean mentally deranged. Crazy can be your feelings about how annoying something is...doesn't it just drive you
I guess I'm just saying that 'Crazy' isn't always bad. Even when I use it in regard to being an emotional, often irrational, and doubting woman. Sometimes that's just how we are. Sometimes that's just how I feel: crazy. What other word can describe my ups and downs in a five-minute time span? What other word can peg my anxiety over various situations? Sometimes I just feel all over the place internally... and crazy seems to be the only word that can sum of my inner dialogue that so often feels bipolar.
It's complex, I realize.
Because sometimes my crazy can be bad. Sometimes, when I'm living out of irrational thought-processes and over-emotional decisions...the crazy feelings can have a negative affect. I don't necessarily think inherently that it is, but often the way that it can play out is something to be aware of. If I know that I'm prone to be trigger-happy, making irrational bullet decisions that can heavily affect others and myself...I need to be aware of how that part of me may need to slow.it.down. I don't need to break up with a guy on the spot just because he chews his food unattractively and in the moment I am repulsed by him. Sometimes I just need to sleep on it and let a new day come and change my perspective.
I get that women are often pegged as 'crazy' and that sometimes it may be seen like I'm only encouraging the stereotype. I'm not. At least, I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to acknowledge that I often feel crazy, and often those feelings of craziness are a good sign that I'm perhaps on the verge of doing something crazy. Making a bad decision, saying something silly, worrying about something unnecessarily...living out of instability instead of stability. A world in motion, not a world rooted in something solid and secure.
I want women to be able to acknowledge that sometimes we do have crazy tendencies...not give others a license to call us crazy simply because we are women. I want women to be aware of when those feelings arise and how to handle them appropriately. Sometimes we do need to voice those feelings and express our emotions...sometimes we do need a safe net in which to be irrational and ridiculous and back and forth emotionally. We do need to have husbands that can allow us to be our overly emotional, irrational, worries selves....men that won't quickly chastise us, but will listen to us and recognize that this isn't defining of us. We need to have friends who do the same. People in our lives that gently are able to remind us of the the stability instead of the world in motion.
Expressing my ever-changing emotions isn't, however, probably the best when I'm talking to a boy I like that I'm, simultaneously, trying to discern whether he might like me too (because that has a whole slew of mixed up/messed up emotions attached to it). There's a time and a place to be crazy--in almost every sense of the word.
I'm sorry if I offended. I'm sorry if I perpetuated stereotypes.
More than anything, I want women to know that they aren't alone... that they aren't the only ones out there who sometimes feel all over the place emotionally. And while, yes, sometimes that can be/lead to bad... I think I just want to acknowledge that it happens. It's part of who we are, how we were made, something we have to fight hard not to act out of constantly... and that sometimes the depth of our emotions and capacity to feel different things at the same time can be absolutely beautiful as we relate, as we have compassion, as we engage in other's lives. Sometimes our 'crazy' can be good.
I don't want women to ever feel like they need to discount their feelings. I just want us to be aware of them, to understand how they affect us and our decisions. A life of self-awareness, essentially...and a life of self-control (once we realize the negative ways in which we can be consumed by all of this).
Because I'm often crazy.
And, most of the time, I think it's perfectly okay.
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