Going Crazy - a short story

free-reign (66)in #story • 5 years ago

Going Crazy

How does the meaning of the word, “crazy” translate in your mind? What imagery appears when you think of what was going on inside the minds of people throughout history who’ve been declared to have been “off their rockers?” What comes to mind when you hear that someone either “went” or “is going” or “has gone” crazy? Whatever it is that you see with your mind’s eye or feel with your being, it certainly must represent, as you understand it, a complete separation from reality at the least; something that most of us can’t really imagine, and the pity is that most of us would not understand separation from reality even if we were unfortunate enough to be afflicted with a debilitating mental illness in which that separation actually occurs.

The first time I ever witnessed someone having an epileptic seizure, I was 4 years old. I was with my family as we visited a distant relative. We were at our car, getting ready to leave when I saw this full-figured, very well-dressed lady walking up the street toward us, and then suddenly, she was on the ground, making all kinds of wild movements while some men were holding her down by her arms and legs. I didn’t know what was going on and it scared the hell out of me. I asked my mother, “Mommy, what’s wrong with her?” My mother answered, “She’s having a fit.” Not knowing what a “fit” was, I inquired for further meaning. “She’s going crazy,” my mother explained.

The wheels were turning… I knew what crazy meant. Well, I didn’t actually know what it meant; I just knew that it was a very bad thing that caused people, (as my mother had explained to me at some point), to not know what they are doing. At 4 years old, one can’t understand mental issues, or that there are multiple mental health diseases and/or challenges involving varying levels of disability for those so afflicted.

Inadvertently, I had been both shocked by witnessing a grown-up person “going crazy and having a fit,” as well as having frightfully and spectacularly learned that “having a fit” and “going crazy” meant the same thing. That image of the lady, and that explanation stayed with me through my growing-up years. I had never met another person with epilepsy, (that I knew of), and most of that time I still thought that the lady with the seizure was the definitive act of “going crazy.”

I was attending junior high school the first time I saw a girl classmate have a seizure. I never thought about the lady at that point though, because the scene was different somehow. Perhaps it was because I knew the girl. She was in my class. Her name was Norma Rae. The teacher told our class that Norma Rae had had an epileptic seizure, that it’s something that some people have, and that it causes what happened to Norma Rae. For me however, no connection was made between Norma Rae and the lady.

As I grew up and became more educated, I learned about mental health, the challenges and afflictions that mentally-ill people face. In college, I took a psychology course, the height of which was spending a day at a day-care facility, observing the children and asking them some questions. While I didn’t enjoy the course all that much, I did manage to gain a better understanding that the seizures that affect epileptics are (or were) sometimes referred to as “fits.”

Finally, I understood that “having a fit” meant something other than “going crazy.” The funny thing is, that at that point, I still didn’t make the connection back to the lady I saw experiencing a seizure at 4 years old. It wasn’t until several more years had passed, when I suddenly realized that the image of the lady still came to mind when I heard someone say that someone had “gone crazy.” Then it was BAM! An instant rewiring took place in my brain, and I knew instantly that I had kept connecting the lady’s seizure with going crazy because of my mother’s influence on my thinking. That influence was so strong that I had, more or less, been “locked” into holding onto the act of being crazy translating to the image of that lady, kicking and flailing around and being held down, even though all the way to that point it had been a lifelong misunderstanding.

My mother had given me a quick explanation for a word I didn't understand, that wasn’t actually correct. However, when a real-life crisis is taking place in front of us, most of us have been known to come up with a quick, sometimes not altogether true response, just to get an idea across to a 4 year-old, if for nothing more than to just shut them up.

It can have a lasting effect.