I’m Crazy

I’ve spent more time fantasizing about my funeral than my wedding day,

and if we’re being honest;

and today (and most days now) I feel like being honest—

maybe that’s why my marriage didn’t work out.

Because I kept rehearsing the ending of my life

instead of learning how to build one.

I used to think: at least people would show up to my funeral.

Maybe the room would fill.

Then all the truths would finally come out

the way blood comes out of a shirt

when you stop pretending it’s “just a stain.”

I pictured all the people I ever handed pieces of myself to—

little souvenir versions,

even the worst ones

coming together in one place,

standing close enough that everyone would realize

none of them really knew me at all.

Like a potluck of strangers,

each holding a different dish I once called me.

And if you asked everyone who’s ever known me

to use one word to describe me,

I have a feeling the most common would be:

crazy.

It’s valid.

It also makes me sad.

And it’s why I’m changing—

or at least why I’ve been trying.

Because I’m tired of being a rumor with a pulse.

I’m tired of living like my reputation

is the only thing that ever stayed loyal.

And look—obviously the end of my marriage

had nothing to do with the drugs, or the lies,

or the material items I dragged in with me

like bridal bouquet fillers:

the Mercedes, the Jaguar, the clothes.

No, no,

it was definitely fate,

or Mercury retrograde,

or the way my ex’s aura “doesn’t respond well to commitment,”

or perhaps—my personal favorite—

“two strong personalities.”

Sure.

Because why blame the gasoline

when the house has the audacity

to be made of material designed to burn?

The truth is uglier, and I know it:

he was going on tour

and I was looking for a new reason to be on the run

from responsibility,

from consequences,

from the wreckage I’d left behind,

from the therapist who was the one person

who actually cared about my well-being

and invested in who I could become—

and for some reason I hated her for it.

I hated her because she saw me clearly.

Not the performance.

Not the tragedy I could sell.

Not the charming little spiral I called “a personality.”

She saw the machine under the glitter—

the pattern,

the pain,

the way I mistook being rescued for being loved

and mistook being witnessed for being controlled.

And that’s exactly what it had to do with.

Because you can’t build a marriage

on a foundation of running.

You can’t ask someone to hold you

when you’ve made an art form out of disappearing—

not just from places,

but from accountability,

from your own reflection,

from the quiet truth

that you were becoming a person

you wouldn’t have trusted either.

I didn’t plan on making it this long.

That’s the part nobody knows how to hold,

because it doesn’t look like a suicide note—

and if I left one of those, they’d call me dramatic.

It looks like a calendar

that just… stops mattering.

Even when I wasn’t actively suicidal,

I was headed toward death.

I was living like the future

was a concept only other people got to believe in.

And there’s that line they say in Narcotics Anonymous—

the one that sounds dramatic until it doesn’t:

the ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

I used to hear it like a warning for someone else.

Like a poster in a hallway

I could walk past because I was special.

Because I was smart.

Because I was “functional.”

Because I was pretty in my suffering.

Because I could make a joke out of anything

and call it resilience.

But the ends were coming for me too.

And no matter how hard I tried,

the end was not going to arrive

with good lighting.

I regret that relationship.

Not because it wasn’t real—

it was real in the way a fever is real,

in the way a car crash is real,

in the way you can swear you’re flying

right before you hit the ground.

I regret the version of myself I fed to it.

I regret how I used love like a hiding place.

I regret how I wanted a fresh start

without paying for the ending I caused.

I regret the ways I hurt someone whether he actually loved me or not.

Sometimes I look back

and I don’t even feel connected to the person I was then

and maybe I feel even less connected

to who I was before that

and maybe that’s okay.

Maybe the disconnection is proof

I’m not still trapped inside those rooms.

Maybe it’s a sign

I’m not rehearsing my funeral as much anymore.

But I won’t romanticize it:

I was pathetic.

Not in a “poor me” way—

in a please-stop-lying-to-yourself-before-you-fucking-die way.

There were a million things I should’ve seen.

Red flags so bright

they could’ve guided an aircraft.

Warnings stacked like receipts.

Moments where my gut screamed

and I called it anxiety

because anxiety felt easier to manage than truth.

I should’ve seen that love doesn’t thrive

where secrecy lives.

I should’ve seen that I was treating people

like stages to perform on

instead of human beings.

I should’ve seen that I was holding grief in one hand

and a match in the other

and calling it “coping.”

But at least now I know better.

At least now I know the difference

between being convenient

and being safe.

At least now I know

that the truth doesn’t have to wait for my funeral

to come out.

I can tell it while I’m alive

even if my voice shakes,

even if it ruins my whole aesthetic

(and it has),

even if some people still choose to use that one word

because it’s easier than learning my new name.

Let them.

I used to be crazy.

I probably still am, a little.

But I’m not trying to be a beautiful mystery who got away with it,

I’m trying to be the person who got better

And believe it or not I am.