There’s a certain little word that likes to be tacked on to women who choose to live outside a certain accepted norm. And this label is “crazy”. Not only does it put negative connotations to those who actually are living with a mental illness (not the people I am referring to in this article), it also paints these amazing women as the “other”, people to be wary of, to sceptical of, to not take seriously. Here I explain why, actually, crazy girls just do life better.
1.They’re actually not crazy at all.
“She transforms her own dark into her own light. She sees her private shadows – and loves them. She meets her own emotional depths – and owns it. She faces private fears of separation – and rises above the illusion. She is the source of her Self and she is always in a greater state of becoming.” -Molly McCord
The crazy thing about crazy girls is they’re actually not crazy at all. They’re actually ridiculously intelligent. The way they have chosen to live their life is a totally conscious decision, born from years of questioning the nature of themselves, others and the world around them, and deciding what is the best way for them. They’ve realized it is impossible that a one-size-fits all happiness model can work for all seven billion of us, so instead of listening to the advice of the powers that be around her she’s working out what serves her. Though others might see her making what they call mistakes as she forges ahead on this path, she just calls them lessons as she lovingly places them in her toolbox to learn from down the track.
2.They’re fiercely passionate
“And you tried to change, didn’t you? Closed your mouth more. Tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake… You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that. And if he wants to leave, then let him leave. You are terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.” -Warsan Shire
The crazy girl is insanely passionate and doesn’t love by half-measures. Wether it’s a project, a subject, a place or the people in her tribe, if she loves something she loves it silly, throwing herself into it head-first. If she loves something she wants to smell it, taste it, learn everything there possibly is to know about it. She doesn’t understand how some people only show their love on special once-a-year occasions. Nor does she understand how some people vocalize gratitude in retrospect. She thinks any day is a good day to whip out some L and G, because she knows any single day could be someone’s last.
When protecting the things she loves she can be feisty as all hell. This is where the label “crazy” tends to come from, as throughout Western history a woman was deemed crazy or hysterical if she exhibited certain “symptoms”: emotional excitability, outspokenness and sexual desire. Slapping a medical condition on it made it easier for people to marginalize and make a mockery of. Now, the crazy woman doesn’t care what society labels her as, because she’s just busy doing her. She knows hurtful labels are just a small price to pay for living true to herself. She knows living a life of restraint would be so much harder. And that’s that.
3.She’s brings the realness out of others
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…” -Timothy Leary
This girl doesn’t have the patience for small talk. Time-filler conversation almost physically pains her. So this girl encourages you to deviate from the standard script of social norms. Around the same time normal people you just met are asking you what you do for work she’s asking you about the last time you cried or about your relationship with the universe. And strangely, you feel comfortable telling her. She has no patience for smoke-screens or the carefully cultivated face you put forward and would rather get down to the gritty, whole truth of you; the parts you’re proud of and the others you’re maybe not so. Which, by the way, she will whole-heartedly accept. And just know when she fires up about something you said, she’s not trying to dull you down. She’s encouraging you to come meet her out in the light of raw and authentic, and will love anyone silly who does.
4.They’re actually really kind people
“Bring me your suffering.
The rattle roar of broken bones.
Bring me the riot in your heart.
Angry, wild and raw.
Bring it all.
I am not afraid of the dark.” -Mia Hollow
For all her intensity and passion, the crazy girls is actually incapable of inflicting pain on another person, even those who have done wrong by her. She has a habit of absorbing the pain from those around her and tends to make it her mission to take it away- even if it is not within her power to do so. She’s developed a strong emotional intelligence over the years and doesn’t shy away from the shadows, both her own and others. For this reason people tend to feel safe with her and gladly hand over their secrets for safe-keeping, letting themselves be pulled under her protective wing for inspiration and guidance.
5.The stories they leave behind
“Gifts come to us when we open ourselves to the single greatest truth that those before us knew: there is a larger world behind the one we see around us every day. That larger world loves us more than we can possibly imagine, and it is watching us at every moment, hoping that we will see hints in the world around us that it is there” -Eben Alexander, M.D.
When the crazy girl leaves the earth, sometimes far too soon, they leave behind the kind of legacy that doesn’t die even years after. No one cares about how conventionally successful they were or weren’t, what they had or didn’t have. They’re talking about how she actually, truly, lived. Years after, they’re still laughing over that time she stayed up all night to bake you a birthday cake that turned out to be awful, or that time she wore nothing but cut-out stars over her nipples to Rainbow Serpent Festival. How when she used to focus her attention on you you felt like one of the chosen ones, like you were one of the lucky few being let in on some big universal secret. And other stories, passed back and forth like golden parcels, that when you tell people who didn’t know her you’re met with a resounding, wide-eyed “no way. She did what?”
You don’t just love the crazy girl, she is love. And she continues in both life and death to remind the people she left behind to live, not just exist.
And that, my friends, is why crazy girls just do it better.
