Dear Junior,
I remember the day I realized I was crazy.
Crazy is a harsh and heavy word, but I needed a word like this to push me into the next step of my personal growth. In a literary sense, using a simple word like crazy sounds better than I remember the day I discovered I’d spent my whole life rationalizing irrational behaviors and thought processes up until the moment I realized that I had been living a life with the worldview of the narcissistic and horrifically traumatized woman who raised me.
That’s it in a nutshell, though, Junior. All the pieces came together and came crashing down on me, and in an instant I saw I’d been living a life of codependent behavior, addiction, escapism, manipulation, and delusions of control. For decades.
Do crows have a word for crazy, Junior? I know you have a code of ethics and behavior that leaves room for lies and deception, but is anyone certifiable? With all the surviving required of crows on a daily basis I have trouble imagining there would be room for my delusions, if I were a crow. Definitely my self-doubt would have gotten me killed when I finally fledged the nest.
I once knew a crow that I thought was crazy. This was back in the days before I really knew crows, before I started spending time with them like I do with you. This crow would follow and scold and scream at every human on the block. I wanted to figure out why, but the guy I was with wanted to throw rocks at the crow. I was with this guy because I was afraid of him and didn’t know I deserved to be with someone kind and gentle. I didn’t stop him. I should have, though, Junior. I should have thrown rocks at him. If I ever see him again, I will. I’ll tell you more about him later.
I realize now that the crow wasn’t crazy, that their behavior probably started with something antagonistic like rock-throwing or fledgling molesting, and humans who chose acts of irritation over acts of compassion for the crow probably made it worse, made it evolve into a shaming of all humans. Humans can be assholes when it comes things they don’t understand. They can be assholes to people they don’t understand, too. We’re working on that.
The woman I mentioned earlier, Junior, she was my mom. I had a dad in my life, still do, but my mom dominated my childhood experiences. She was the one I needed to please, Junior. It felt like life or death, sometimes, either an affluence of praise or a deluge of expressed disappointments. I was lucky to be such a gifted kid. I did some amazing things, got some spectacular grades. So long as I had that praise I knew I was a good girl. Praise sustained me. Without it I lingered in ambiguity and self-doubt. Decisions were hard. Self-motivation almost nonexistent. Yeah, I definitely would have been a dead crow by now.
My mom was the one who decided who we liked and who we didn’t like. Lots of people we didn’t like were neighbors, friends, and family. Often the person we didn’t like most was my dad. I wanted to please her, so I tried to dislike him, even though I loved him.
My mom was the one who made all the rules. Rules that were only consistent in their inconsistency, with punishments that fluctuated depending upon her mood. I got really good at reading her emotions, Junior. It helped me predict what was coming. I got good at reading everyone’s emotions, animals, too. You’re good at picking up on that stuff, and I guess that’s why we get along so well. Your intuition, though, Junior, it comes from a different place. Survival, sure, but also the gentler things like communication and curiosity.
When I finally realized that my mother was sick, that she was a composite of all of the obsolete survival skills she’d developed from the days when her father would rage and beat and do other unmentionable things to her and her sisters while her mother would stand by and do god knows what but obviously not stop it, when at last I was able to see my mother in this light, I also saw it in myself. I won’t lie, Junior, it scared the shit out of me. Not just because I didn’t want to be crazy, but because it had taken me almost forty years to figure out that I had been living my life based on many of her guidelines. Her narcissistic, boundaryless, subservient, manipulative, paranoid rules for life.
I can hardly imagine any of this makes sense to you. I’ve seen how you and other crows do your parenting. Sure there are rules, sure some of them are strict. I don’t understand all of them, but I can tell you that everything I have seen has been very consistent and that none of the fledglings I’ve watched grow into adults seem emotionally scarred from any of it. In fact, the ones I do know seem quite bright and self-sufficient. Fun-loving. Content as their wild lives allow, if I dare make such anthropomorphic assumptions. (But as you like to remind me, I am your friend, not a scientist. I bring you eggs and watch you preen your husband, Lod. This gives me license to blur the boundaries of human and non, as our shared experiences are neither study nor experiment.)
But back to the day I realized I was crazy, Junior. I’m telling you, mama, I nearly fell apart. I couldn’t, though. I had to go to work. Had to make money to survive. Maybe crazy isn’t a concept you can relate to, but survival is. I had to keep going. The day was a blur. Speaking was difficult. My body felt physically weak. When I got home, I messaged a friend who had grown up with a similar kind of mother. I told her that nothing about who I once thought I was made any sense and that I couldn’t understand how it took me this long to realize the type of person who had raised me.
“You are not your mother.”
It was the first thing she said to me. The words I needed to hear. She called me kind and compassionate and emotionally intelligent and many other reassuring names. She talked me down from the precipice of self-loathing.
Self-loathing, Junior. That’s not something I can ever make you understand. Best I can offer is for you to imagine how you feel about the raccoon that ate your babies last spring and turn those feelings against yourself. Why would I do that, I’m sure you ask. I don’t know, Junior. I’m inclined to think this self-loathing thing is uniquely human. And yet our species continues to consider itself superior.
The day after I survived discovering I was crazy I woke up with the flu. I missed a week’s worth of work. As soon as I climbed out of bed and back into my work clothes the pandemic hit. Most of the world I operate in as I know it shut down after that. It was terrifying, Junior, not knowing how I was going to make ends meet, to pay bills, to eat, but it gave me plenty of time to work on healing. If I had known that this healing journey would bring me to you I would have rushed into my self-proclaimed insanity years ago, with open arms and a bag of unshelled peanuts.
All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.
Your feedback on this writing is appreciated. Your honest feedback even more so.