Don’t Call Me Crazy

“She’s crazy”

The word (and its many other forms: psychotic, insane) is ingrained into our heads, spilling into our daily vocabulary. Everyone does it—me included. I hate the c-word, but I drop it on the daily. It doesn’t just apply to girls either. Anyone is vulnerable, and the word allows us to write off any potential background story for why someone is acting in a certain, “crazy,” way.

“She’s just crazy.” I hear it all the time. There’s no more discussion: no one wonders how she/he is doing, no one bothers to dig a little deeper. Think about how easily we throw the word around. According to a quick Google search, crazy means “mentally deranged.” Or it means “extremely enthusiastic,” but people rarely mean it in that way: it’s never positive.

I think I call other people crazy in hopes that if I use it to describe someone else, then no one will call me crazy. I attempt to create a strong border between me and “crazy.” If I point out how someone else is crazy, does that make me more sane? But, that’s obviously not how it works—it just reinforces the use of a word as an acceptable adjective.

I ask my friends if I’m crazy a lot. I’m not sure if that’s normal, but I find myself replaying past actions on loop in my head, analyzing everything trying to figure out how other people view me. It’s constant, and it’s almost automatic that if someone hurts us or does something we don’t understand then they’re just crazy. At this point, everyone’s “crazy,” and if you’re not you simply must not be leaving your house very often.

Over the summer, I worked for a mental health nonprofit focused on destigmatizing mental illness and the way we talk about mental health. The first exercise the group of summer interns took on was rethinking our use of stigmatizing words in our everyday vocabulary. Crazy and insane were two of the top offenders. As someone who deals with anxiety and depression, I’m always worried that someone who doesn’t understand what the heaviness of depression or the franticness of anxiety feels like will write me off as crazy. I cry, a lot, and in public, I overthink, and I work myself into spirals that I have to claw my way out of. It sucks, but I’m not crazy. Calling someone crazy diminishes their emotions. There’s always more going on. Dig a little deeper. Find a new adjective.

Don’t call me crazy.

By Arden Schraff

Duke Student, mental health activist and resident goddess making Insta casual.