Like many people, the news I woke up to this morning is so overwhelming, I’m in a state of shock. Unlike many people, I’ve been in this state often, I know the road out pretty well.
This is about dancing with the crazy man.
For those of us who grew up with abusive or neglectful fathers, or married good men who turned into monsters after getting married, it’s a familiar calculation. The horror of it is that there’s no option of not dealing with the crazy man. The question is; how do you deal?
Looking at the national election results – painful, but they must be looked at – shows us that the majority deals with the crazy man by just offering obedience. Understandable, but a very poor strategy. Not only is it not a way out, it inevitably digs you in deeper. The crazy man expects you to obey. Always.
In Lynda Barry’s book One!Hundred!Demons! she illustrates that one of her personal demons is resilience. Why is it expected that you can recover from everything when really, it’s a massive and maybe impossible task to recover from anything? Her text offers a narrative over the illustrations, telling the story of being sexually abused as a young child. By someone who is pretty clearly a crazy man. It’s swept under the rug with “children are resilient,” but, are they? Is she? Like a toddler, the question “but why?” echoes through the subtext.
I think of people who lived their whole lives under Stalin, under Franco, under Mao, and yet, they lived their lives. Maybe they read their poetry to friends at small parties, rather than try to publish. Maybe they played the guitar and just hummed along, rather than sing the words of rebellion that someone might hear. Maybe they never had a rebellious thought in their lives – maybe they didn’t even know those thoughts existed.
There’s a film about the Argentine Dirty War; a group of women have a reunion. They have not seen each other since high school, and as they tell their stories of murdered loved ones and missing colleagues, one woman insists that these things only happened to bad people. It slowly becomes clear that her husband is part of the junta, and she is the only one who is as innocent as they all were when they were young together. Because when you blame the ‘bad people,’ and you get to decide who is bad, it’s very simple.
It’s also very crazy.
In the small city that I live in, we have the largest (and best equipped and very highly paid) police force around. We have more police per resident than anyone else. When I ask people how they feel about the city spending so much money on the police, I see a shadow of hesitation cross their faces (and the question isn’t about denouncing their status or their actions, just consider the expense) I see that they do not even have their own permission to question authority.
In California, in the 21st Century. They do not have their own permission to question authority.
That’s the fear of the crazy man that keeps most people dancing. What happens if you walk away?
In my own experience, the crazy man is not even aware that he’s dancing. He needs you to stay with him for balance, because he does not know what he’s doing, and he’s terrified of falling. Without you to partner with, without your presupposed submission, he’s just whirling in space.
So, here’s the road out. Give yourself permission to ask questions. Like a toddler, just “Why, why, why?” Know that resilience isn’t required, and it might not even be possible. You might be hurting for a very long time; go ahead and do your thing anyway.
There might be a shadow that falls over you, or the noise of the angry music he’s dancing to. Deal with him by creating your own dance. Sing your songs, laugh with your friends, dance in a circle, dance by yourself.
Just let go of the crazy man.
Judith Martin-Straw
