They Must Be Crazy

Sometimes you’ll hear people say I fell in love in the third grade and never got over it. That’s preposterous. In third grade, I learned that the fairer sex is somewhat suspect. I still believe that, but being a reasonable person, I’ve made allowances.

Like any decent person, I fell in love in the spring between fifth and sixth grade. So far, my captor hasn’t seen fit to release me. I don’t mind. While she’s never let me get away with anything, she’s been a very gentle mistress.

Not believing I was ever worthy to drink from the well, I sought out instead some forty, um, six, reasonable facsimiles of her. Each remarkable and worthy in their own way, but absolutely sharing some physical, emotional, or mental trait with the original model. For the most part, they’ve been very understanding about my adventures. Most are still good friends.

The issue it seems is that you cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. While there are some fine sow’s ear purses, that I was a remarkably unattractive creature was never much of a secret.

Beauty is a gift from God. I decided to seek something I could control myself without his help. I decided to become charming. Charm you can cultivate and train like a waxed and curled mustache. I learned poems from gay men. I learned inappropriate, but very funny anecdotes for every occasion. Tallulah Bankhead, a gay icon of the forties, was an immeasurable help.

For a millennial child, a body count in the forties must seem shocking. For an eighties child, it’s something of a disappointment. Let’s just say I was a late bloomer.

I have, at times, had gay men express an appreciation for me. I never accused them of being insane, although they may have been willing to sell themselves short when they shouldn’t. I’m not an ideal lover. I’m not even a good one. I’m pretty good with a cigar and a drink though. I have stories you can’t imagine on deck ready for the telling.

Unless you’re a member of the American College of Psychiatrists, or some similarly accredited and vetted institution, I don’t really care what your opinion might be about the relative sanity of gay or transgender people. You’re wrong. I’ll say it to your face.

Gay and transgender people are accused of mental illness to dismiss, disgrace, and disenfranchise them. It works because, even though the various forms of mental illness are as common as the various forms of cancer, in America, we still consider them defective, shameful, and worse. It’s their fault. They didn’t work hard enough. They took too many drugs.

While I absolutely didn’t like some drugs, I took quite a few drugs. I settled on alcohol and tobacco. You know, the ones that kill you.

Drugs impacted me very differently than they did my brother. While I spent many years blaming him for bringing on his schizophrenia, if I’m being fair, I did most of the same drugs, just with different people, and with different music.

I had the locks that fit ADHD and Depression. He had the locks that fit ADHD and schizophrenia. Neither of us were actually at fault. Illegal drugs don’t come with a health warning. Maybe if they weren’t illegal, they would.

For a long time, I wouldn’t talk about mental illness. It was a painful wound at the center of the Campbell family. Deciding I didn’t actually want to die, I also decided I should speak up rather late in the game.

Reality warping diseases like BiPolar and Schizophrenia, plus Depression, and Suicide are mental health issues that were pressed upon me as a child and at regular intervals ever since. Months before I fell into what became a life-long love, I learned that my brother, who I admired more than anyone, except my dad, was hearing the voices of people who didn’t exist, and had to be hospitalized. That’s quite a lot for a thirteen year old to process.

Since then, these themes of love and suffering have woven together to form my life. It is a tapestry of many colors. The bright and the light threads were made more brilliant by the dark and lifeless threads. I can’t be an advocate for love because I’m not very good at it, but I can be an advocate for mental illness, because I have a very loud mouth, and a pen that functions like a sword.

Gay and transgender people aren’t “crazy.” They have a condition. You have freckles and male pattern baldness, they know Barbara Streisand songs. Get over it. Calling them “crazy” is a naked attempt to demean and dismiss two very different kinds of people, neither of which deserve it.

Everyone I ever met just wants to live their life with the conditions they were given. That you may have some opinion that you’re somehow better than them is actual bullshit, and you know it’s bullshit, but you pretend it’s not bullshit to make yourself feel better—and that’s bullshit.

I remember when
I remember, I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo, in so much space, mmm

And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much, mm

Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?

Possibly