Crazy Isn´t Always What They Say It

When You're Teaching Creative Nonfiction, It Helps To Have Written About Your Life In A Very Open Way, Because You Can Say, 'look, How Much Are You Willing To Risk Emotionally To Write? How Careful Can You Be With The Other People You're Writing About?

[i] Learned ... That Friends Are A Good Source Of Food And Soul When One Has Not Yet Gotten The Hang Of Cooking Or Living (as Opposed To Dying) Alone. That Nothing-not Booze, Not Love, Not Sex, Not Work, Not Moving From State To State-will Make The Past Disappear. Only Time And Patience Heal Things. I Learned That Cutting Up Your Arms In An Attempt To Make The Pain Move From Inside To Outside, From Soul To Skin, Is Futile. That Death Is A Cop-out. I Tried All Of These Things.

Me And My Needs Were Driving My Mother Away. Me And My Needs Retreated To My Closet, Disappeared Into Fairy Tales. I Started Making Up A World Where My Needs Wouldn´t Exist At All.

The Idea Began To Sink In, More Than It Ever Had, That I Might Be Crazy, In The Traditional Sense Of The Word. That I Might Be, Forever And Ever Amen, A Crazy Person. That's What We'd Suspected All Along, What I'd Been Working So Hard To Disprove, What Might Be True. I Preferred, By Far, Being Dead.

I Developed A Deep, Abiding Fear Of Jeans, Which I Still Have. I Hold My Breath And Shut My Eyes When I Pull On A Pair In The Dressing Room, Afraid They Will Now, As Then, Get Stuck At My Hips And There I Will Stand, Absurd, Staring At The Excess Of Hips That Should, If I Were A Good Person, Be „slim“.