Crazy is an Eye Cream and I Don’t Wear It
Deranged, however, is a different story. Reckless abandonment? I mean, have you ever power napped on the floor of the hostel handicapped bathroom stall when they wouldn’t let you into your room? In Paris, the fashion capital of planet earth? But that’s not crazy. That’s just me. At times I can be a little quirky. I got angry with someone recently who called me that. Not really. She’s a friend. But while I did rage against it, it’s certainly true. You have to be pretty damn quirky to walk the streets I’ve walked. Or race the alleys of the souk after losing your keys alone in Morocco and sacrifice your suitcase to the dead chicken guts-gods in the pursuit of a taxi. Quirky, yes, but crazy, no.
At the risk of being political—I’ll stop in a minute—I posit that every woman at Fox News is crazy. And I’m telling you—it’s in the eye cream. They all look the same—like aliens who morphed into some AI semblance of “average human” to blend in before they kill us all. There’s botox—spray tan. Eye cream. There’s probably a right-wing TikTok trend telling you which one to buy. Well, buyer beware. You’re trading in your fundamental rights because it’s promising you the fountain of youth. Well, it’s just an eye cream. A crazy one.
Really, though, what is crazy? I’ve been called crazy multiple times in my life by people who wanted to (and succeeded in) pissing me off. My therapist wants me to define these things—normal; crazy. She says normal doesn’t exist. I tell her that’s a crazy thought. (What kind of eye cream do you wear? Kidding.) Sometimes those words get under my skin. Am I normal, or am I crazy? Planning a trip to Kazakhstan is normal, right? (Hint: deranged.) The weight I feel in my chest when I wake up during certain times of my life is crazy, right? Or the chest pains I get when I think about my finances? (Hint: more normal than you would think, as my therapist reminds me.) What if I just stopped letting small words define my big life? What if I’m just… me? While sometimes I feel differently—on the days when the weight hits my chest—I quite like the feeling of me when I forget the words.
When I forget the words, I realize there is more to me than my resume. There is more to me than the mistakes I’ve made in the past. There is more to me than certain people give me credit for. There is more to my life than working at a law firm. Now that’s a crazy thought. But what is this amorphous “more”? I guess that is what I am trying to find out. Through language, through travel, through randomly applying for jobs I don’t qualify for—“more”. In trying to sit still with this uncomfortable uncertainty I wonder if “more” is already within me. Not something to achieve, but something that just is. Mi alma. My soul. Getting to the bottom of it seems a never-ending process. An exhausting process.
My therapist (gods above bless her soul) tells me I have worth simply by existing. Just by breathing, I have worth. Over the several years I have seen her we’ve gone over it time and time again, and I still don’t understand. It doesn’t compute. I’ve spent my entire life believing that my worth comes from work. It used to be working my way to God. Now it’s working my way to my next career. I still believe the capitalist lie that if I work hard enough, if I am disciplined enough, I can achieve my greatest dreams. Is it a lie, though? But over the past month I am beginning to realize that there is that amorphous “more”. I remember words and I struggle with wanting to define it. Maybe it doesn’t need a definition. Mi alma. My soul. To echo Descartes, who I sincerely believe, I think; therefore, I am.
Maybe it is crazy to believe that my worth comes from work. Perhaps I do wear the eye cream I so rage against. In light of my recent realizations, maybe I do exist in the realm of “not normal”. However, I think we can all relate to feeling a little lost. We can all relate to desiring a place in the world. I have no clue where my place is (although I hope with every fiber of my being that it is in Latin America). Maybe it isn’t a physical place—maybe home is a state of being where I finally realize that simply my inhaled oxygen and my exhaled carbon dioxide has worth. But for now, I’m still working. I can create this home, whether metaphorical or tangible. I can exist crazy, deranged, reckless, abnormal, or just me. I can exist with kindness. I can exist with hope. In this bizarre and hostile world, we all could use a little more hope—something Fox News could never offer. (Regardless of who you vote for, avoid the spray tan.) I hope for a small town in Latin America and a job that makes me feel important. With a world as big as we have, I don’t think that is a crazy thing to ask.