Why I am crazy - February 17, 2009
I'm crazy. I am. I am not normal.
I get emails all the time asking me, "Bunny, why are you crazy. Why are you so damn crazy?"
Imagine you're six. You're sleeping lightly--only halfsies in sleep--on a hot summer night, your synthetic, pink nightie just a bit twisted around your midsection, suggesting you've not been sleeping long. You never sleep well. The color of your eyes in family photos of your childhood are unnoticeable, so shrouded in purple the skin beneath them is. You look like the grim reaper.
A breeze blows through the open window of your bedroom. It catches the gauzy fabric of your curtains and billows them a bit, shakes your Snoopy lampshade. The movement is unsettling. Any movement in the night is unsettling. It always has been, since...well...since time started for you, and you don't know why, but you are always afraid at night. What's more, no one believes you have a reason to be. You hear things you are told you didn't hear. You see things you are told you did not see, and the air of the world is full, solid, weighted with uneasy matter that no one else can see.
And then someone is pulling on your toes and tickling the bottoms of your feet. You snap to from whatever halfsies sleep you were experiencing and lift your head, but there's no one at the bottom of the bed. Just a few weird shapes and swirls. Something looks like an eye, and it winks at you. There's whispering and laughs. Sweat pours out through every pore on your body especially the wrinkled skin between your heels and your toes.
You spend the remainder of the night tossing and turning between your parents' annoyed torsos. "We've got to do something about this," says daddy. He sighs his displeasure with you. He is mad. It hurts when dad is mad at you, but you can't seem to stop seeing, hearing feeling things that are not there.
A thought dawns on you. Could you be? Are you? Are you are crazy?
Now, imagine you are seven. You are slumbering with your family along the St. Lawrence river in an old canvas camper your father has renovated. It is hot and summer again. No covers. Your sister sleeps next to you, deeply, snorting air through the tiny passage in her deviated nose. The campground is mostly quiet. There are the sounds of the barges blowing their great horns, some crackling/burning wood, and that crunch noise flip-flops on gravel make when campers head past to the community bathroom for a late night pee. Black shapes pass from one side of the canvas to the other: their shadows cast.
The family sleeps, but you do not. You never sleep well.
There is a desperate whispering on the other side of the canvas. A man. There's no shadow, but his voice is quite clear in your ear, and he mutters things like, "How could she do this to me...how...I don't...how could this happen...why...how did this happen." You can almost feel his sadness through the canvas, the air, different dimensions and total suspension of disbelief. It is impossible, but now you feel so desperately sad, and you were not sad before.
"Daddy, there's a ghost!" you cry out. He rolls over to his side and rubs his eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"A ghost! There's a ghost out there!"
Daddy is quite used to his daughter claiming there are ghosts everywhere, and mustering patience to deal with her and her ghosts--yet again--and at such a late hour is a tough feat. He is silent for a moment, during which time, one of the great horns of the barges on the St. Lawrence blows again. It's a haunting enough sound to explain the whole "ghost thing."
"Oh, honey, that's just a barge."
"No! No, it's a man. It's a ghost. He's right there; can't you hear him?"
"Honey...it's just a horn from a barge. It's okay. You're going to be fine."
And I was not fine. I had not been fine for some time, or to be honest, not any time I could remember. I was walking fear. Swirling shapes and noises followed me everywhere, even into my dreams, and I was often so terrified of being alone that there were nights I purposely wet the bed so that I'd have a reason to crawl into bed with mom and dad. I pissed myself so I wouldn't have be alone. I was not fine at all, and almost certain I was crazy.
"Just go to sleep. You'll be fine. You're fine," said my father, rolling onto his back, ignoring me again. The man continued his whispering on the other side of the canvas, and I couldn't lie back and pretend he wasn't there. I was not fine.
"I most certainly am not!"
Now.
Imagine you're 27. You sit next to your boyfriend and watch Deadwood on HBO, and somehow within the chunk of space that separates you from Ian McShane's face, a woman materializes. She has short blond hair and a neat appearance. She wears a pink and taupe sweater, the details of which you can clearly see. There's no fuzziness anymore. The bits of eyes and hands and noses that used to float around a few feet or so from your ceiling in your childhood bedroom are now very organized, very human-like busts and torsos, and they all seem to want something. They tell you what they want, because they can talk now, too. Great. Pushy, talky ghost torsos.
For some time now, you've been praying to various deities before bedtime--any of them that will listen--so you can get some sleep. You close your eyes and vigorously pray, "Dear Jesus, I know I haven't been your biggest fan, but that's more to do with the shitty people who follow your teachings than you, and anyway, can you please, please, please make a magical white bubble around me while I sleep, an impervious one, because I can't have dead people knocking on my skull all night. Xoxo, Erin." You're not one to praise Jesus, but this seems to keep the torsos away. You seem to be sleeping better. You can ignore whatever crazy is coming to you.
But the blond lady, she will not be ignored. She's rather pushy, actually. You tell her to go away. She says she won't, and that you have to tell your boyfriend something. A message.
No, you insist, and tilt your head to the right a bit so you can see Ian McShane snarl. Your boyfriend doesn't know you're crazy. He is a very rational person with a law degree, a materialist who thinks if you "can't see it, it doesn't exist."
She won't leave you alone. "Hello! I'm not going away!" she says. "He's in danger!" she says. "He's going to die!" she says.
And so you turn to your boyfriend and say, "Um...sweetie...did you used to know a blond woman...who died?"
"I don't know," he replies, his face all contorted. Quizzical.
"She says...er...she had blond hair and her name was Jane. She used to watch you when you were little."
"Jane? My godmother?" [The torso nods yes].
"Yes."
"What about her?"
"Well...and this is going to sound crazy, but...she's here, and she says I've got to take you to the hospital."
"What?"
"She's here. She says you're going to die if I don't take you to the hospital."
"I mean...what the..."
You get up and gather his shoes, and while you bend down to put them on his feet--he's not going to put them on himself--he asks sarcastically:
"You mean, you see dead people and my Godmother is one of them?"
"Yes."
"Okay then, Bunny, if that's Jane, ask her what she gave me to drink instead of apple juice that made me cry."
"She says vinegar."
"What?"
"Vinegar."
"Good guess."
"That's not a guess. Jane says we have to go to the hospital."
"But Bunny, Jane is dead."
"I agree."
You take your boyfriend to the hospital. He is admitted for emergency surgery. The doctors who perform the operation say, "He had maybe a day left to live."
Later that night you sleep unsoundly in a chair next to your boyfriend, and have a dream about Jane. She gives you a bowl of Doritos for some reason. She pets your head and says, "You did a good thing."
Now.
You're 30, living in Manhattan. Chinatown, to be specific. It's 3am, and raining. The evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table. You're drunk. You've been drunk for about a month, and because you're the only white person living in your neighborhood, and you're always drunk, it seems as if you've been on one big drug trip--for months now--barreling dizzily through the grimy alleys of some exotic, disgusting, third-world place, communing with rats, pissing in doorways, sliding on the slime that coats the sidewalks, the slime the seeps through the trash bags left for pickup, the slime the seeps out of the bellies of the finless, gutted sharks that are piled high affront the shops.
This place, it's ancient and awful. This is the place of death, poverty, disease. This is the place of murder, rape and torture. Hangings. Stabbings. You name it; it happened here, and its ghosts are not pleasant.
The nightmares, oh they're awful. You don't sleep for days and drink and drink and drink, and then go sliding around the city, barely cognizant, broken from reality, an open knife in your hand. Some nights you don't even know if that person--that one, right there--is a person or a dead person who's resembling a person and seems like a real person. The whole world is turned on its head. No amount of prayer keeps the white bubble up. No deity is powerful enough. New York is too miserable. Nothing keeps the whispers quiet. It's as if you're six again, except there's no jumping into mom's and dad's bed. Not even if you wet your own. There's no justification. There's no escape from the crazy.
There never has been. Not for a moment. Not for a minute of this life.
And so I suppose, this is my very long, elaborate way of telling you that while you may ask me why I am so crazy, I have no answer to give you. I can only say that I never take a breath without mourning the absence of all the things I've never had: a good night's sleep, stability and peace.
Posted by The Bunny at 1:05 AM
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Comments
Wow. I can't even begin to grasp what these experiences must be like. I'd love to hear more...
Posted by: michelle at February 17, 2009 05:36 AM
I think if you see a dead person who actually helps someone in the real world, it's only a little crazy. But I have a habit of believing in things that others don't, so maybe I'm crazy too.
Posted by: Caitlin at February 17, 2009 06:23 AM
....and no I'm not one of those people trying to convince you that you're a part of an extraterrestrial race. I'm just looking for answers as well and I think anything and everything is worthy of at least one question.
Posted by: Jenna at February 17, 2009 08:38 AM
Bunny, that was so intense. I'm sure you know that your fans and followers feel for you (myself included), especially those who have suffered through similar experiences. I wish you only the best, but if you can get rid of the pop-up ad above your entry about getting "Deep Sleep" with a new bed, there wouldn't be any unintentional irony with your post. The placement of the ad is funny, but your words certainly aren't. Your amazing post shouldn't be tainted by ironic ad placement. Your words are far too gripping to be distracted from.
Posted by: Sway at February 17, 2009 09:24 AM
Your writing here was a fantastic way of connecting your story to someone who never had to go through what you did. I have goosebumps.
I don't understand how you can call yourself "crazy." Crazy would imply that it's all in your head; you actually have proven through solid events that you have something real. You're like a differently calibrated human -- you tune into frequencies and wavelengths that the rest of us float through like radio waves. Like the sounds dogs can hear and we can't.
I think this is very real to you, not because you're crazy, but because it is real. I'm not going to get annoying and start calling it a gift, because obviously it's not that black and white for you. You remind me of this a woman in my dad's village in Poland. There were rumors that she had some sort of other worldly connection, and my dad and his cousin were young and brash and decided they wanted answers. After annoying her, my uncle was told that his only child would die young. Years later his only son drowned, swimming in a pond on prom night.
She didn't want people to come to her, she didn't call out for attention like Slyvia Brown or the other weirdos making money off this stuff -- this little old woman usually upset people or hurt people with what she told them. She didn't want to be part of it. I don't see how anyone who actually goes through it could. I hope that hippiville has given you some peace.
Posted by: Nadia at February 17, 2009 11:37 AM
this guided meditation CD might help with both sleep and protection:
Posted by: Bess at February 17, 2009 12:59 PM
I think you should treat this as a gift. If ghosts are helping people who are alive, imagine all the good in the world you could do. Or helping a ghost finish his/her unfinished buisness?
Posted by: Thatguy85 at February 17, 2009 02:27 PM
I still want to fuck you.
Posted by: JAH at February 17, 2009 02:35 PM
Sanity is subjective.
I took about two years off from reading the RMMB or your blog. It seems like you're a lot more irritated and agitated in recent posts. They still read wonderfully but they're more frantic.
As a kid I have had some similar experiences to the ones you described. They sort of went away as my empathy went away and my spirit dissociated. I think you might just be a tremendously empathetic, sensitive and vibrant person (while also being brilliant and Irish). There's an album by Luke Vibert called "Sorry I Make You Lush". There's also a song called on the album called Shadows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge63qfBLGCo
PS. Sorry for the off putting PMs on RMMB. I hadn't yet read your post on here about avoiding crazy people :). You asked where I came from and I answered honestly.
Posted by: dionysiac at February 17, 2009 06:14 PM
i'm sorry you have to live with that, Bunny. it sounds really scary..i thought i had trouble sleeping.. p.s. if it makes you feel any better i forgot to wear a bra when i worked out today and now my nips are chafed and they sting.. its pretty funny.. well not right now, but i'll probably laugh tomorrow when they feel better..
Posted by: citizen_shameshame at February 17, 2009 07:48 PM
I suspect your perception is overlapping into another dimension, parallel existence, macrocosm, microcosm, time shift, hereafter, something beyond our vision and reality.
We need to tug you back here so JAH can fuck you.
The question is how. How indeed..
Shine On Bun.
Posted by: colin at February 17, 2009 09:08 PM
I am new to your blog but i must say your writing is incredible. It is witty and truthful. I must say I have the same problem with sleeping, whatever God is out there it is his sole purpose to make sure I never sleep and maybe he is not content with just torturing one or two. Or maybe just maybe we are the sane ones and we are living in a world full of crazies....
Posted by: Destroyed Inside at February 17, 2009 10:14 PM
You're something else. 'Crazy' is not something I would call you, not in a serious way. If I called you 'crazy' it would probably be more a term of endearment. You rock, you.
Posted by: Wayland at February 18, 2009 02:06 AM
I think your brand of crazy and your ability to experience otherworldly things are mutually exclusive.
How you got so lucky to be able to do both is irrelevant, I suppose.
Posted by: judi at February 18, 2009 06:15 AM
You're crazy because you're a woman and all women are crazy.
Posted by: machine at February 18, 2009 11:35 AM
As always, I love hearing your words.
I just wanted to say that there are other people who have shared very similar experiences to yours. I love the show "Children of the Paranormal", where a medium and a psychologist work together to help children experiencing paranormal phenomena and communicating with spirits no one else in their homes see or hear. There is so much fear and self-doubt in so many of the kids; most worry they're crazy though they KNOW they are actually sensing something outside themselves. The training in using their sensitivities often transforms and empowers them. Have you ever thought of seeking some guidance in using your own sensitivities?
Posted by: joy at February 18, 2009 11:44 AM
Sometimes they listen to me if I ask them to do something, but I never actually see them. I haven't, except for one time when I was 4. Interesting how many readers focus on the supernatural as the cause of your 'crazy', and deny the craziness because the supernatural is real. In reality it's sleep deprivation that's pushing you to the edge. You've probably already tried this, and I know that some won't listen even if you do, but what about asking them to let you sleep?
Posted by: Fast Runner at February 18, 2009 04:09 PM
Wow. I hope you write more about this. An old friend of mine and I have seen this type of thing, too. I'm a skeptic and feel that these "visions" come from within. Whether they are comforting or terrifying seems to depend on self-perception.
Posted by: Jess at February 18, 2009 05:20 PM
I don't think you're crazy. You're a crazy brilliant writer and artist,but not crazy.*** Maybe you just have the natural ability to utilize a piece of the Universal Consciousness that most of us have to try to utilize or happen upon by accident now and then. Think of it as a gift. Maybe it's just a little misdirected. But what the Hell do I know? You figure out how to get a good nights sleep let me know, huh?
"For many an individual entity, those things that are of sorrow are the greater help for unfoldment.."-Edgar Cayce ***
Peace.
Posted by: Scarecrow at February 18, 2009 07:57 PM
Reminds me of my childhood. All ghosts in the closet and monsters under the bed. Dad was always cool with me squatting in the bed, mom wasn't. Guess who I have a better relationship with these days.
Good one Bunny.
Posted by: Glassmotg at February 18, 2009 11:04 PM
I hope to be as talented as you one day.
Posted by: Hotwheelz at February 19, 2009 02:44 AM
I believe you. I believe every word you say. I hate Mary now too. Something about you and your words move me. The detail and description you give in these events proves the truth....to me anyway. I missed you. Welcome back to the blog. I am wishing you all things good and a peaceful night of rest.
Posted by: Joanne at February 19, 2009 08:37 AM
I am floored...and a little scared. Make that a lot scared. Clearly, there is far more out there than most of us can comprehend. I would pay you to hear more about these experiences. Seriously. You are blessed, but because we are all so "dumb" and have no ability to do what you do or see/hear what you see/hear, you are far more alone than we are,while simultaneously far more connected and in tune than we could ever hope to be.
Posted by: Goats at February 19, 2009 11:00 AM
Who was the boyfriend? Was it Tucker? Can he corroborate?
Posted by: curious1 at February 20, 2009 10:44 AM
Holy Bejesus. Well though I can't relate to most of your story, I can relate to two thing. 1)Something messing with your feet as a child in bed and seeing movement and eyes and such at the foot of the bed. Most grandmothers might tell their grandson that it was just his imagination, and that there weren't any monsters in the night. MY grandmother told me matter-of-factly that it was "Duendes" that I was dealing with, and that they were very mischievious. - The Second thing I can relate to is the lack of sleep, having been an insomniac for as long as I can remember, I still sport the circles.
As for seeing dead people, good luck Haley Joe.
Posted by: Horus at February 20, 2009 12:14 PM
Bunny,
You are not crazy. But, you are not "normal" either. I agree with some of the comments: sleep deprivation could increase the awareness of individuals in the spirit world. Regardless, a "normal" person will say you are "crazy" because a "normal" person doesn't see ghosts...and there are so many more "normal" people out there...
But you're right, there is no escape from "crazy" because like others have mentioned, "crazy" is an ability to see more than just the material world...I dunno...maybe you could blind yourself somehow? But please don't do that, I believe 100% THAT would NOT be the right course of action.
A wise man said that one purpose of life is for each of us to expand our capacity to love. It appears that you are farther down that path than many of us. Not only do you have the opportunity to love the living, apparently you have the opportunity to love the non-living?
I dare say that there are some "non-living" that are deserving of love and some that "are not", just as you have learned that there are some living persons that are deserving of love and some that we would prefer to avoid...but can we really say they are un-deserving? Or does it just seem terribly unpleasant to deal with those kinds of people?
Yeah, all of that, or maybe I am crazy too?
Posted by: ncgreg231 at March 1, 2009 07:49 PM
I think you're a brilliant and intensely emotionally evocative writer. And a loving and touching woman. And a touch crazy, but it's only a touch and most of the time it's under control. Mild schizophrenia I suppose, which probably has some name or another.
You can and do use it creatively, as have many others. At this stage, a year or so past thirty, it's unlikely to progress and may regress.
Go bunny!
Posted by: dougjnn at March 26, 2009 06:06 PM
I'm not just saying this. You're not alone.
Posted by: Lisa at April 11, 2009 12:07 PM
I had a lot of strange experiences when I was a child...I have no doubt about that sort of thing. I am so glad it went away...for the most part. But on at least one occasion that I can remember, I asked one of them to stop doing something and it complied, who knows why? Then again, that wasn't a scary one, just an irritating one. Did you tell your therapist about this? I'm not sure if I would.
Posted by: Amyazing ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.thebunnyblog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 15, 2009 09:47 AM
In some cultures night time represents the hours when witching occurs. Some Native American tribes do not allow music at night for fear it may bring out the demons that the fires keep at bay. In modern times, Native Americans have been curiously proven to have higher instances of alcoholism. While the correlation-causation implication may seem like obfuscation, restoration of self and ownership thereof seem to help when seekers wander about for answers.
Posted by: Green Taylor Simms at April 29, 2009 09:17 AM
That was an amazing read.
I have had experiences similar to what you've read. Its always reassuring to me to read about these experiences from other people, because sometimes I feel that I am alone and a tad crazy myself. Than I read stories like this, and have isolated conversations with people I sometimes meet and then I wonder just how alone I really am...
I went through a period where I tried to focus on this otherworldly part of myself, and it did no good, you can spend as long as you like searching for what this shit is and you'll never find it. Now I try my best to ignore it and focus on my own life, on my own career, but it never goes away, its always there at the edge somewhere, in my dreams, in my thoughts, in the synchronicities I see happen around me almost every day. I am getting old enough that I feel that it won't ever go away.
I have had experiences where I knew deep down I was going to make a mistake or I was going to go down this path or the other, and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it. Half the time I try to tell myself these hunches are crazy, that theres no possible way I could know these things but they unfailingly turn out to be correct. This thing seems to have its own agenda for me and it seems I just have to go along with it. How am I meant to feel like I'm in control of my life when this has literally happened for nearly every major event in my life so far?
Well, fuck it, time to start drinking again... it's the only tool I have to get out of my own head and stop thinking for a while.
Posted by: Rogue_Trader at May 15, 2009 07:56 AM
AH..you mentioned Deadwood...indeed one of my favorite shows...and you're not crazy, but you are quirky. I bet you walk around with an inner monologue all day.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 9, 2009 03:51 PM
This post reminds me of the time my girlfriend was told by spirits during a mushroom trip that she was pregnant and ended up being right about it.
Posted by: Jeff at October 27, 2009 06:56 PM
