mizChartreuse || redefiningSuccess

“Take it easy, take it easy. Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy.”  -The Eagles.

That should be my mantra. I should write it on the dry erase board in my bedroom and in pink lipstick on my bathroom mirror.

I have come to the acceptance that I LOVE DISORDERED PEOPLE.

[Note: I will use the words "disordered," "ridiculous," "clinically," "insane," "chemically imbalanced," and "hilarious" multiple times. There are only so many synonyms to describe these kinds of people...]

Crazy people have more fun!

I’m pretty much positive that Sean will build a Chute Staircase like this in our future home.

See, I’m used to crazy. In fact, given my upbringing, I love and welcome it! My dad is bipolar and my mom is a Leo–and we all know what results when you combine the two! Chaos! So can you blame me? I’m just a total weirdo with multiple personalities who will stay up ’til the wee hours of the morning maniacally scribbling in my Moleskine notebook when I’m left alone for too long.

So naturally, I choose to associate with crazy people. My boyfriend’s brain has an isolated, unique strain of ADHD for which there is absolutely no known treatment after 29 years. He will go from looking sharp and classy like this:

Sean, me, and my bestest (and craziest funniest) friends Shakeel, Diana, Carrianne,and Jason.

…to this in a nanosecond. With or without alcohol being involved.

Lincoln Town Smut

Now, Sean definitely takes the cake when it comes to being clinically insane, but he is also the smartest person I know. You know how you’ll watch someone like Will Ferrel or Conan O’Brien on TV or in a movie and think, “Oh, dear God. That man is absolutely nuts.” Or Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey is absolutely insane. You kind of have to be crazy to be a comedian, and Sean is the ultimate funnyman. I think he made my friend Diana pee last weekend because he said or did something so ridiculous.

The Best People in the World are Nuts

But isn’t that how it goes? All geniuses, artists, and creative people have some sort of  ”psychological disorder.” But the brain madness is where the ingenuity stems from! It’s how art is born! Some of the most amazing musicians have created epic masterpieces because they’re either crazy or on drugs–and either way, the brain is effed up! Scientists have found a definite link between genius and crazy.

Emily Dickinson and Charles Schulz suffered from anxiety disorders. Judy Garland and Ernest Hemingway battled depression. Beetoven, Van Gogh, and Isaac Newton were bipolar. And they have given some of the most amazing contributions to this planet.

***

My friend Dee is probably the most funny woman I know. I can’t be around her for thirty seconds without falling on the ground laughing. The voices she uses for impressions span the widest range of anyone I know, and her retard voice (and face) make me shit my pants. Literally, every word that comes out of her mouth is ridiculous. And like Sean, she is so incredibly intelligent…it all makes sense.

Here’s a spattering of examples of such hilarity (p.s. I am not asserting that Diana is mentally ill; just saying that she’s insane.):

Epic Durty Dee quotes:

“Good Lord. at some point my boob *is* going to come out of this shirt on my train ride. Well butter my ass and call me Janet Jackson.”

“Oh Jesus Christ Shepherd of Judea. hahaha I got like 4 hours of sleep last night.”

“DING DING DING DING!!!! Jaley! Come on down and snag your prize! A suuuuuuper mongo! jumbo! tampooooon for your heavy flow and wide-set vagina!” *said in announcer voice*

“want to come see my hard drive? I promise it isn’t 3.5 inches and it ain’t floppy.”

On the bus: “This fart smell has not dissipated nor diffused. I’m pretty sure this smell can only be described as being stuck in a refrigerator box with a gassy orangutan whom of which, has been surviving off a diet of sordid Mexican foods and sour Italian salami.”

And that’s not even the half of it. Every other sentence that comes out of her mouth is just that funny…and I don’t know where it comes from.

Dee thinks my expression in this photo is just an unadulterated yearning for her downstairs mixup, but really, I’m just scared because she’s going to suck out my brain through the rose in my hair.

***

Actually, We’re ALL Nuts.

As evidenced in the examples above, pretty much all the people I hold near and dear to my heart are insane.

But really? Is it bad? Does mental illness REALLY exist, or are all these disorders just excuses for pharmaceutical companies to charge us $50 per prescription and turn us into drooling zombies and for medical professionals to have their names printed in research journals?

“Men have called me mad,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…”

“They” say (and I don’t know who “they” is) that there is an 85% chance that YOU YOURSELF are mentally ill in some form, whether it be body dyspmorphic disorder or schizophrenia.

I think the term “mentally ill” is simply the scientific definition of the more colloquial description of being “fucked up.” I also believe that those who are “fucked up” really just have an alternate view of reality…but I’m fucked up myself, so I’m just biased.

Bipolar Disorder

Think about manic-depressive disorder. When it all boils down to it, someone who is bipolar is someone who isn’t happy ALL THE TIME or sad ALL THE TIME. But who is? Either way, naturally, a lot of people just use it as an excuse for everything.

Life is great!

I will kill you in broad daylight!

Bipolar people’s moods flip without notice, as demonstrated above. To that, I give a big, resounding, “MEH.” I get like that on a regular basis…usually a week before I start bleeding from my cooch. Ask my boyfriend.

(Of course, there are the bipolar people who take it a step further and steal your money, spend $800 on American flags at KMart, dance on top of cars, don’t sleep for days because they’re divinely transcribing a “message from God,” and kill you and your family in your sleep. These people must be shot on sight…or heavily medicated with Lithium.)

ADD/ADHD

Encyclopedia Dramatica says that most parents these days are too concerned with their careers to really give a shit about their children. Instead of taking care of them, they hire nannies. This, combined with a steady diet of Pokemon, leads children down the slippery slope to ADHD. Of course, parents could just spank, slap, or even chastise little Timmy when he’s being a fucking retard, but they refuse to. This is because the liberal media tells them that spanking is wrong and drug corporations tell them that the reason their kids are so fucked up is not because of bad parenting, but because of, you guessed it, a disorder called ADHD. The parents then spend money on Ritalin and Adderall and feed it to their kids fucking them up even more.

We’re human beings. That’s what we do. We simply BE–and to call a personality trait a disorder, in the negative sense, brings that value judgment. The ego.

The day after he met my crazy boyfriend, I ran into my friends Jason and Carrianne at a street festival in Chicago. “Last night was fun!” I reminisced about CC’s housewarming party. “I was all over the place, though; there were a lot of distractions.”

“And by ‘distractions,’ you mean ‘Sean,’” Jason said. “He is hilarious! He is insane and has so much energy! How is he like that? Does he do coke?”

“No, no. I’d never date a partyer like that.”

“Weed?”

“Negative. He hasn’t smoked in forever. I think he just has ADD.”

“That makes sense!” Jason exclaimed. ”His energy never dies! It must be ADHD. Man, that’s not fair. I want a disorder! Why wasn’t I born with one? All those disordered people are lucky because they’re so much more fun.”

Yep.

I’m not discrediting the fact that there are some people whose imbalances necessitate medical intervention (or a swift kick to the head), but a lot of the time, crazy people are fully functional members of society, bringing nothing but laughter and fun times to those around them–and some of the most creative and beautiful works of art to the world.

This is a ten-minute documentary by my journalist friend, Natalie Tolomeo. She talked to several psychiatrists about ADD (which she definitely has) and focused on the Bright Side of the “disorder.” It’s very insightful and very well researched–it’ll make you think.

Again, I LOVE crazy folk. Our respective forms of madness are what endear us to one another.