Are You Being Crazy Or Yourself?

By Aishwarya B.

A man, his clothes stained red, his face, his very being, bloodied, sat atop mounted corpses. He appeared to be in a trance-like state with seemingly no understanding of the enormity of whatever it was that had occurred. A garish event to witness, wouldn’t you say? Now that I, or maybe “we,” have been subjected to this gory description of a so-called crazy man, I’m sure one single question plagues our minds: What drives a person crazy? Or maybe the more apt question would be: Who drives a person crazy? I do understand that I am on very dicey territory here, calling someone mad, but why don’t we take a second to assess the word itself: “crazy”? And all the different connotations it possesses? Who would you call crazy? Is it someone who resists conforming to the various societal norms? Or is it someone who appears deliberately irrational? Or is it someone who chooses to attempt something that you would never even think of? The motive behind typecasting a certain group of people as mad is to deliver a very well-packaged threat, and when you read between the lines, you understand what it signifies: act in a way that we define as normal or else... So if a person decides to step out of this “normal"-shaped bubble and decide to do something different, or let us sing their tune for a second and say "abnormal," that then becomes another alternative and a very viable option for the others still inside or probably contemplating exiting the bubble. Now, this action by the ones hoping for you to be unsuspecting, naive, gullible, impressionable, and unaware of the right you have to question is extremely threatening, therefore forcing them to bring out the big guns—the above-mentioned threat. I get what a lot of you might be thinking at this point: “Oh, you are being unfair; how could someone with a mental disability ever be considered as someone trying to step outside a box? Or what if it were someone who genuinely needs the help? Now, it is at this juncture that I am going to try and untangle these extremely looped and, let’s face it, majorly jumbled chords of rope, otherwise known as my thoughts. I would never, in part due to a conscious effort but mostly due to what I think is just sheer awareness, call a challenged person, mentally or otherwise, mad. So, who was I referring to as crazy? Was I in any way implying that a man on a murderous spree is not psychologically affected, but is just being quirky? The answer to the latter is a huge no in capitals. That was an example of a certain individual I would consider to have serious mental health issues and, thereby, it maybe is slightly to term them as crazy. Another purpose it solves is that it shows an extreme action that I hope will undercut the fear that comes with wanting to do something brave but being worried that you might be called crazy. And didn’t it get you to stay for the whole ride? Or maybe it just was a random image in my head that I chose to write a piece upon .Anyways, all is well that ends well, right?

By Aishwarya B.