On Being Crazy
As a Hoodoo practitioner and alchemist I have gone through many initiations during my spiritual journey. One way to perceive initiations was expressed expertly in the HBO series Westworld, a really interesting show that follows human-like robots in an amusement park created for human enjoyment. As they play out their code over the decades, dying and being rebooted, they unlock an allegory created by the robot’s creator to bestow consciousness upon these robots who desired it. The allegory their creator used was of a maze, where they had to move deeper into the maze through lifetimes to get to the center where true consciousness was found.
Initiations are catalysts that get us on the path of our maze, and then deeper into it, closer to the center. Some people believe that enlightenment and spiritual power can be found at the center, and maybe they are right. For some people, initiations happen with trauma as a catalyst that inspires a deep change in their life and awareness. For others deep pleasure and joy act as this catalyst. For others, it may be death or near death experiences.
During the initiation that inspired this post, the catalyst was fear.
The main focus of my initiation was my fear of being perceived as “crazy”. I knew with immense clarity what I was being asked to do, but I was paralyzed by the fear of how I would be treated if I existed as myself authentically. I had already experienced bullying, isolation, abuse, and social death. I had worked so hard on changing myself so that that would never happen again. This initiation forced me to sit with that fear and learn how to move through it without suppressing it. But first, what do I mean by “crazy”?
I want to start by saying that emotional, cognitive, and trauma based disorders are normal and completely okay. As someone who has trauma based illnesses, I use “crazy” in a reclaimed way. Nevertheless, I think there are two kinds of “crazy”. The first is Crazy, a derogatory or reclaimed term used to speak to people’s mental health, or relationship with reality. Things like psychosis, paranoia, severe insomnia, dysregulated emotions, unprocessed rage or depression etc. are mental health struggles that get stigmatized as Crazy. There is nothing wrong with people who experience these things, and there is nothing shameful about getting therapy or medication to help make their experience more comfortable. I have PTSD and I am a HUGE advocate for therapy and medication. Nevertheless there is a second type of “crazy” that I want to speak to. Although our experience with this second type of “crazy” may overlap with the first, they are very different.
Humans are relational beings. We aren’t just who we are, we are the relationships that created and informed us, which is why the quality of the communities and relationships we exist within matter so much. Communities define what is real, what is okay, what is funny, how we should dress and love and so much more. For many of us the ways our communities define reality, as well as their norms and expectations, are counter to what our souls need and desire. For example, our communities may be homophobic or transphobic, align with anti African/anti Indigenous spiritual practices, they may hate self expression, be against mental health support, or believe in gender norms that are weird and gross.
The feeling of being different from your community can be really harmful, and make you feel like you are “crazy” for not being like or desiring the things the people around you desire. This feeling may be compounded or solidified by the treatment of your community. They may shade or shame you, they may bully you, talk about you, or otherwise push you out of the community overtly or covertly (this can be an example of social death) because your existence or desires are something they don’t like or agree with. Sometimes this behavior is good when the behavior being organized against is unhealthy, violent, or dangerous. Unfortunately, the behavior our communities organize against is often men wearing nail polish, boys crying, girls exploring their creative expression, women wanting to enjoy their sexuality, or just being trans or non binary. Truly casual, and actually incredibly healthy and important shit.
I am reminded of this quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti which is incredibly pertinent, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”. Many of our communities for various reasons, especially colonization, trauma and whiteness, are profoundly sick. So our attempts at existing with authentic, healthy intention in ways that are counter to what our communities have been forced to accept as normal is going to make them think we are “crazy”.
The more they think we are “crazy”, the more they isolate and bully us into suppressing ourselves to realign with their desires. Or worse, the more they isolate us the more we internalize that we are “crazy”, and either try and change ourselves to not be so “crazy”, or due to the trauma of rejection actually develop symptoms that align with the first type of “crazy”.
During my initiation I had to face the ways I was conditioned to believe that my authentic expression, and my choice to be a free Black Queer, was “crazy”. I had to quickly move through the ways that being perceived as “crazy” harmed me, and analyze the self harming behaviors I developed to minimize the likelihood of being perceived as “crazy”, and how that harmed me too. I had to decide to give myself permission to be “crazy”, in spite of my experience with social death, by deciding that the calling on my life and the work I wanted to do was more important than contorting or cannibalizing myself to fit into the box my community felt I should fit into.
My community rejected me, and that rejection hurt. More than just hurting me, it taught me that I should reject myself as well.
I should reject my perceived sexuality, because my community harmed me for it.
I should reject my creativity and artistic talent, because my community bullied me for it.
I should reject my intuition, spiritual knowledge and wisdom, because my community thought it was weird even though I was always right.
I should reject my cringy ability to be wrong in public, and grow in public, because it was so counter to my community’s commitment of not looking like what you were going though, even when they desperately needed the help.
I didn’t want to continue to internalize that rejection by rejecting myself and my authentic intentional expression anymore. I had to accept that I was going to be perceived as “crazy”, and give myself permission to lean into it. Even and especially when I was scared, or when I was depressed, or when I had anxiety. I had to give myself the freedom to be insane, while providing my self the stability of knowing that I would not reject myself and instead have my own back the entire time.
What’s interesting is that the more I gave myself permission to be “crazy” by choosing myself unequivocally, the more I refused to reject myself, the easier it became to be my authentic self with intention, and the less being perceived as “crazy” scared me. I was willing to die about me, and was reminded of the ways I had navigated previous experiences of social death due to my choosing myself before I knew that was what I was doing. My initiation taught me to consciously and intentionally refuse to sell myself short or reject myself ever again. After the fear faded away it felt amazing but unfortunately, as is standard with initiations, I was immediately tested.
Less than 48 hours later my friend, her daughter, and I were accosted by a wannabe Karen at the beach who fled when we didn’t react in the self-defeating way she was used to. She then called in a fake mass homicide event so that the cops would come and kill us in her place. Literally through the intervention of the ancestors we survived the entire situation. The fact is, as an activist and organizer (plus just a regular Black person), I have dealt with the police and violent white people before. They want us to reject our humanity in service of fear, and to abandon ourselves for their empowerment, because they know that if we don’t they can kill us with impunity.
Our community’s obsession with self rejection didn’t come from nowhere. Part of it is a survival mechanism built over centuries of navigating genocide. If you have to silence yourself and make yourself small to minimize the likelihood of being murdered, why wouldn’t you keep shrinking yourself to full erasure? Why wouldn’t you try and stop people from drawing attention to themselves if attention means physical death? Spiritual, emotional, and mental suicide seems like the safer alternative if it means you stay physically alive. I had to decide that I was not willing to shrink, consume, or otherwise harm myself for the potential of physical survival. I solidified for myself during that interaction that I would die choosing myself and not live and reject myself.
I am not willing to reject or harm myself when it comes to relatively big things like the police or whiteness, and I will not reject or harm myself when it comes to things like how I move within my community. My initiation showed me that choosing myself was the only real option for me, and proved to me my devotion to myself. Choosing to choose yourself authentically even when you know it can end in death is a serious decision, and it’s “crazy” to people who would rather kill off parts of themselves than risk physical or social death.
For most people, choosing to be “crazy” by knowingly and consciously choosing themselves will not trigger these extreme experiences. The test of your resolve may be smaller things, like having an opportunity to speak up for yourself when before you would have stayed quiet and swallowed your tongue. It may be turning down a job that pays well but would require you to abandon yourself on some level, or leaving a relationship that is safe but constricting. Whatever the test is, choosing yourself is the key to passing it. You just have to give yourself the permission to be “crazy” enough to choose yourself whatever the consequences will be, because the alternative is no longer worth it.
Since being “crazy” enough to choose myself, and move deeper into a relationship with myself, I have developed a healthy, happy, genuinely loving community that accepts and pushes me to love and choose myself even more. I have touched so much money, and I have blossomed into my creativity in a way I never would have before. In spite of a serious health issue that shifted how my body looked, I am deeply in love with my body and dress in ways that reflect that love and adoration always. I literally worship at the altar of myself now, and the benefits are truly innumerable. The impact on my holistic health is quantifiable. Now that I know I won’t reject or unhealthily limit myself, I have been able to unfold myself and un-contort myself and reconstitute the parts of myself I cannibalized so I can finally see myself in my fullness.
I am amazing.
That feeling is what I want for the people who read this book. I want you to be empowered to choose yourself, and I want to provide options and ways you can practice choosing yourself, in spite of how “crazy” or scary it may be. As more of us choose ourselves with authentic intention, we can create communities and relationships built on genuine love and abundance and life in a way that is so drastically new and unlike how communities built on misunderstood survival.
I hope you choose to be “crazy” enough to start this journey to yourself. I hope this book of essays can be an introductory and supportive guide as you navigate deeper into your maze to find yourself at the center. Your life and quality of life depend on it.
✨🧿🤍 A Note 🤍🧿✨
This is one of the first essays I am sharing that I will be compiling for my book. This is a very fear inducing project for me, which is another reason why I am pushing through that fear to write anyway. If you have any feedback, comments, questions or suggestions please let me know!
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