There’s a very typical phrase you hear from guys when they’re referring to the girl with which things ended badly. Whether it ended by the girl’s hand or the guy’s, or if it just fizzled out, you can always count on hearing these words from the guy as the explanation:
“I don’t know man, she’s crazy.”
Sure, there are words the girls will say too. “He’s a jerk,” is typically the go-to, but there’s something much more sinister going on with the word crazy.
What does crazy imply? It’s defined, literally, as “mentally unstable,” “deranged,” “insane.” But what it actually means, in this situation, is that she cared.
She probably cared that he went home with someone else, or she probably cared when he didn’t say hello to her at a party even though he left her dorm that morning. Maybe she cared that he didn’t text her back when she asked to hang out, or maybe she cared that she saw him hitting on someone else and still sent her that booty call at 2 am.
Do these things sound crazy? Or do they sound like the reactions of a rational person who cares?
I don’t mean to sound as if every man would demean a woman this way. But you have to admit, it’s a phrase you’ve heard a lot.
“Crazy” itself should be a word we avoid. We never know what others are going through, what hardships they have, what burdens they bear. To say someone is crazy is to hurt everyone who has ever been referred to as such, including people who suffer from mental issues.
As someone who has been called crazy by a guy on more than one occasion, I can promise you it burns. It stings to the very core. You pretend it doesn’t, you swallow it up and try to move on, but the word will keep coming back to haunt you. It’ll hit you the next time you see him, it’ll hit you when you move on with a different person, and it’ll hit you when you’re alone. In an effort to avoid ever being referred to as such again, you shut yourself down.
This fear of being called “crazy” is what makes you hide that you care. You lie to yourself that you’re happy in the situation that you’re in, that you don’t mind at all what he does, that you’re content with the shitty way you’ve been treated. And after it’s all over, you’ll smile at him and pretend you don’t feel sick when you see him, because if he knew he hurt you, we all know what he’ll say to his friends when you’re gone:
“I don’t know, man. She’s crazy.”
This word demonizes every struggle that a person enduring any psychological disorder has. To use it in this derogatory manner reinforces the idea that people with mental issues are something else; That they should be avoided, and feared.
And this definition of crazy is simply to care. And in the eyes of the person who uses it, you cared too much.
If someone hurt you, they should know they hurt you. We shouldn’t have to pretend we don’t care just to avoid this insult.
Because in the end, we should look at the word as what it is. It means we cared, and that is the biggest compliment in the world.
So if that’s how we want to define crazy, then be crazy. Be as crazy as you possibly can. And the next guy that calls you that, show him just how fucking crazy you can be.