In Defense of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Let me begin by stating that I love the mentally unstable.

I don't mean this in a coy "I'm cool like Wednesday Addams" kind of way. I don't mean it in a vacant "No one feels my pain" way. I mean it genuinely. I enjoy the company of those people who have been diagnosed with various forms of mental illness.

Bipolar? OK. I know you're not literally going to be Jekyl and Hyde with me. Unless you're off your meds, and that'll be ok, too. Tourette? Sure. I know you likely won't have sudden bursts of foul language unless I beat you at Mah Jong. I know to expect ticks and difficulty maintaining eye contact. And that will be fine with me.

I have probably had more contact with the mentally unstable than the average person. Sure, I'm no psychiatrist or orderly at a hospital. These are people who live, sleep, breathe, and shit the mentally unstable. I am not one of these people. But I am someone who has had a great deal of contact with the mentally unstable. Or perhaps I should put it this way: Compared to the average person, I have probably had more informed contact with the mentally unstable. When I talked with these people, I knew damn well that they had some sort of mental instability, and it made very little difference in the way I treated them. I don't say this as if I'm a saint. All I mean to say is that I likely treated them with the same indifference and nonchalance I do to everyone else. Just because you're crazy doesn't mean that you're on the top of my "To Do" list, for Christssake. You will harbor just as many self-defeating thoughts over there as you will sitting on the other side of my desk, thank you very much and wait your goddamn turn.

All that being said, let me sum up: I love the mentally unstable. They play a significant role in our society and should not be ashamed of who they are. If there were a ribbon for the mentally unstable, I probably wouldn't wear it. But I would support it.

However...

I have grown tired of a certain phenomenon that I find is growing increasingly common - the "crazy" ex-girlfriend. Everyone seems to have one nowadays.

"Hey Jeremy, how're you doing? I heard you and Melissa split up. Is that true?"

"Yeah, jesus. She's fucking crazy, man."

"No way. You two were great. Weren't you together for, like, three years?"

"Yeah, but she went totally psycho on me. I told her I thought we were better off apart and she went totally fucking nuts. Crying, screaming, throwing shit at me. She kept calling me, over and over."

"Holy shit, man, I'm sorry. Is she still after you? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine. She shows up at my work, sometimes. She always says she wants to talk, but I just keep telling her the same thing over and over again, you know? I just think we're better off without each other, you know? Then she starts crying again, and it all starts over. Christ, look - that's her calling on my cell."

"Fuck me. I had no idea Melissa was crazy like that. I'm sorry."

And so on. I hear conversations like this all the time. Of course, the tables are reversed sometimes, too. Sometimes it is the crazy ex-boyfriend who is being maligned. This is not meant to be a gender specific phenomenon. But I am not a tripod, so from here on out we relate to my needs.

Why are people so surprised that people are upset after a break-up? Break-ups hurt. They are painful. They are nasty. They throw your entire world into upheaval. You wake up one day, knowing you have a partner, someone to be there for you and to be your sounding board. Think you'd like to quit your job? Great, you have a partner to discuss it with. Have a bizarre dream about having sex with your dog, except it had the face of your best friend in kindergarten? Perfect, wake up your partner. Your partner is one of the few things in this world that you can rely on day to day. I can rely on my job sucking my ass. I can rely on my $0.82 coffee refill at the Mobil On-The-Go. I can rely on my partner.

And then they go and screw it all up. They've met someone else. They've grown away from you. You've grown away from them. You've grown apart from each other. They have finally realized that you're fundamentally different and can never have a healthy relationship. Whatever. No matter what the reason, it all hurts the same. They reject you.

Rejection hurts.

After a kidney transplant, you take heavy duty medication for the rest of your life. Know why? Because rejection hurts.

Teenage suicide spikes from mid-March to mid-May every year, just after college acceptance letters come out. Know why? Because rejection hurts.

When we get rejected, we hurt. When we get hurt, we experience pain. This pain can be physical, emotional, psychological, or existential. This is not news to anybody.

So, why are we so surprised when our ex's are so distraught after a break-up? Where are all these "crazies" coming from?

Granted, there is a very small percentage of the population who actually get a crazy. One out of a million of you reading this really will find a crazy. You'll be going along and realize you're in
Fatal Attraction or any Josh Hartnett movie. OK, I'll give you that.


But the rest of you are simply not recognizing the repercussions of your actions. What is surprising about crying, screaming, ranting, raving, begging, pleading at the feet of the person who has just tried to break ties with you? A partner, a real boy/girlfriend, is like a psychological appendage. You don't need it to live, sure. There are plenty of amputees out there living full and productive lives. But you certainly don't want to offer up an appendage unless absolutely necessary. And you'll fight like hell to keep it, often even when it is gangrenous and threatening to intoxicate the rest of the body.

Dismissing someone else's pain is cruel and it minimizes the quality of the partnership you had when it was in its prime. The pain that you cause the person you are leaving is part of that partnership still; just because you have decided that this partnership is over does not end the partnership. The story continues because the emotions continue. Denying that there is any cause for pain denies that there was ever anything there to begin with. And if that's the case, then you were both crazy, living together and pretending that you were doing something.

I want to live in a world where I can overhear these conversations:

"Hey, Jeremy. How're you doing? I heard you and Melissa broke up?"

"Yeah, we did. I realized that we weren't good for each other, even though we love each other."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, exactly. But I know it is true. I feel it. And I told Melissa so."

"Jesus, how did she take it?"

"As well as I would have taken it if our places were reversed. She cried. She screamed. She threw things at me. She begged. She pleaded. She tried to have sex with me one last time."

"That's crazy."

"No, it isn't crazy. I hurt her. I hurt the hell out of her. And that is not a rational state to be in, so why should I expect her to respond rationally? This is what people do."

"Do you feel sorry for her? Are you going to take her back?"

"No. I'm not saying I'm going to take her back. I'm just saying that her response is understandable. I don't like it. I don't regret my decision. But this is the natural consequence of my decision. I have to accept that."

Yes. Yes, that would be lovely.

I'm An Extraordinary Machine

I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes. Mostly, I've been enjoying a long overdue period of narcicism and ego inflation. Over the past several years, I have developed a strange obsession with the shape of my skull. It is perfectly spherical. Perfectly. The roundness of my face and skull have come to dominate my self-image. I presume hats won't fit because of my skull. I am dissatisfied with my face because I think it is too round. I have taken to simply running my palms along my skull to perceive its shape. I am tired of feeling this way. So, taking my cues from the Bill Withers Sourcebook, I shaved my head. I look wonderful, round head and all.

I notice that my opponent is always on the go. Although, I suppose saying that it is hard to pin down my trouble with impulse control should be obvious. I'm trying not to post the sort of blog full of whiny "I have too many ideas" or "I am just too creative for my own good" or whatever other self-promoting drivel tends to be out there. My primary problem is that I have no filter for what constitutes a "good" idea from a "bad" idea. I act on them all indiscriminantly. This zero-criteria pattern has left me with mixed results. I admit I enjoy the irregularity of it. But I would also like a better sense of my own motivations. I am tired of feeling this way. I want to make my motives clear to myself. To hell with everyone else.

I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way. Knowing me in my early twenties meant to know this inextriciably. Knowing me in the past several years has meant to only gain a gleaning. I need to learn to "play the game" in the workplace. Like a dumbass, I overdid it. I feel I have done a sufficient amount of moving the work way. I am good at it. I am efficient at it. I hate it. I am moving backwards. I'm no good with choreography; I'm better with improv.

I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me. Why pick the road less travelled? Half the time I don't know if I'm on dirt or pavement. Things have always seemed to just work out for me. This new mode of making explicit directives for myself is new. I am going to make a schedule to exercise by. I am going to force myself to make time for my creative endeavors. I am going to practice telling myself, "Fuck this job. Fuck it long, and fuck it hard." I am going to spend time just loving on my cat. I am going to embrace my giant, Charlie Brown, globe of a head. I am going to schedule myself exercise time. I am going to spend more time introspecting and less time extroverting.

If there was a better way to go, then it would find me. I choose to believe that it will all work out for me. It is not the natural order of things; often things go from bad to worse naturaly. It is not God's plan for me; if there is a God, His plan for me, at best, is an eternity in the gusty layer of hell and, at worst, is an eternity of painful introspection and discomfort. I choose to believe that it will all work out for me because I believe, to the core of my being, in my own ability to succeed. And not in a Tony Robbins, self-helpy sort of way. There is nothing healthy about this belief. My unwaivering belief in myself comes from a pure Arrogance, with the capital A. I choose to believe it will all work out for me because I cannot but help believing in my myself. I am that great.

Thanks, Fiona.

If I Had to Have Sex with an Alien, It Would Be Marcia Cross

If I had to have sex with an alien, it would be Marcia Cross. As aliens go, she's not all that bad. Her eyes are still ludicrously far apart, but at least there are eyelids; her forehead is massive, enclosing a supposedly superior brain, but at least there's hair. True, her nose could pierce a steel plate, but at least the nostrils are symmetrical. From all that I am to understand about the alien abduction experience, probing of some sort seems to always be on the menu. Moreover, this probing often seems to involve one's naughty bits. The experience is widely reported to be traumatic and unpleasant. So, if abducted, I would prefer to have my alien be as becoming as possible.

If I had to have sex with an alien, it would be Marcia Cross.



In my dreams, the most important part always happens on my grandma's front yard. I could be in a classroom, and the chalkboard will just be hovering over the grass with the desks and chairs set up across the lawn. I could finally chase down the shadowy man who has been stalking me, and I will finally overtake him in my grandma's poorly hedged bushes by the porch. My dreams rarely feature, co-star, or even cameo my grandma. Moreover, my dreams rarely take place in or around my grandma's house. My dreams tend to take place at work or at home; I have boring dreams. And so, in my dreams of being at work, I am going through the tasks of my job. I pick up some files. I talk to my boss. I mutter under my breath for her demise. Then, I realize that some important task has been left undone. I realize I'm an hour late for work. I realize I have failed to make an important phone call the night before. As the other foot begins to drop, the backdrop melts away into my grandma's front yard.

Sometimes my dreams know what is significant better than I do. I may be dreaming about an evening out with friends, catching a movie and a bite to eat. That our original movie is sold out and we are forced to select another would seem to me to be the most significant aspect of the dream. But, instead, a length of time walking between the restaurant and the theater crosses my grandma's lawn. I try to remember, "Who was I talking to at that point in the dream? Who was in frame with me? Did I feel anything out of the ordinary?" This experience always leaves me unsettled, frustrated that my psyche keeps secrets from me. What does it know that I don't know? I despise the feeling that I'm being duped, that I am being cut out of the loop. These dreams can ruin my entire day, preoccupying me and making me irritable.

If, in my dreams, it is significant, it happens on my grandma's front yard.



During my inner monologue, the loudest voice of criticism belongs to Lizzy Sampson, a girl I wronged in the eighth grade. She was pretty and popular. And sweet. A social darling without a malicious bone in her body. I hated Lizzy Sampson for her beauty, her social grace. In the eighth grade, Lizzy's parents when on vacation, trusting her alone. Being thirteen, Lizzy decided to host a small party in her parents' absence. Being thirteen, she invited the other popular kids. Being thirteen, she (wisely) opted not to invite me.

Being thirteen, I was devestated and then wrathful. The week leading up to the much tauted party was filled with my careful sifting of completed assignments, secretly removing and destroying Lizzy's homework. The night of the much tauted party, despite the utter absence of drugs, alcohol, sex, even a pathetic and prepubescent game of spin the bottle, I called the police and made a noise complaint. Lizzy's parents returned to a daughter with missing homework, falling grades, and a complaint on public record for holding a racous party without adult supervision. Being thirteen, Lizzy cried and protested. Being thirteen, Lizzy was not believed. At thirteen, Lizzy was sent away to a boarding school.

During my inner monologue, the loudest voice of criticism belongs to Lizzy Sampson.



When I envision my tragic and untimely death, it is always accidental yet resolved. Often, I interrupt some act of violence being committed against my loved ones, such as an armed robbery at a local store or through some random act of mechanical failure that endangers all of our lives. I never sacrifice my life in an act of heroism, jumping in front of a bullet or shoving a child out of the path of a falling piece of steel. Instead, when I envision my tragic and untimely death, it is always a simple matter of being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time.' While keeping my eye on the lead robber, one of the secondary robbers, one that was nervous and unsure about robbing the place at all after a bad omen that morning, panics and shoots me in the gut. Or, while trying to position myself and loved ones out of range from falling bits of buildings, a large and sharp reinforcing bar skewers me through the midsection. Come to think of it, I always die through an injury to the torso - never a head wound.

Although my fatal injury is always accidental, I never succumb to the thralls of mortality, begging not to die or weeping to those around me for help. Instead, my finals moments are always calm and accepting. My loved ones gather around me, and I smile. They always try to apply pressure to my wounds or make me comfortable until an ambulance arrives. I always shake my head gently. "It's alright. It's alright," I tell them. Next comes a barrage of "I have always loved you's" and "Please don't cry's." I always finish this last siloloqy recounting some fond memory of mine involving those around me. They are never telling memories, such as the first day I met my lover or a special family event. These last memories are always small, anonymous incidents, ones that only I would remember especially. This always brings an onsurge of tears from those around me. Then, as I begin to fade, I always end with some single, small regret. "I would have liked to have seen Montana" from The Hunt for the Red Octber comes to mind.

Then, I die. The music swells and tears begin to fall on my body. Those around me don't just cry, they wail. This part is always akin to the cave scene from The English Patient. The moments immediately after my death are always filled with the sort of anguish and sadness that defies description and sound. Open, contorted mouths without sound.

When I envision my tragic and untimely death, it is always accidental yet resolved.