RECLAIMING BREAKDOWNS

by: chloe hechter | design: samantha fuss

Perhaps the most objectively insane deal I’ve ever made was when I told a guy-friend he could do coke off my desk so long as he cleaned it up and acted super into me when the boy I liked was around. Am I proud of this? No. I felt crazy. But does it add character? Absolutely.

I share this somewhat pathetic anecdote because frankly, it’s realistic. You’re not always with the person you want to be with, and what’s worse is that sometimes they’re with someone else–someone who seems to have everything you don’t. I talk a lot about maturity, and perhaps there was a more mature way to handle this situation. Maybe a mature person would’ve found some peaceful acceptance and went on with their night, careful not to cause any trouble–careful to be “chill” instead of “crazy.” But what fun is that?

When you’re in your 20s, it’s your God-given right to make the guy you like jealous, even if you have to go to extremes to get there. The self-awareness in this act is imperative; I knew what I was doing was far from taking the high road, but the only true consequence here was further breaking my own heart. I was willing to take that risk. If you’re plotting and scheming at the expense of your Man of the Hour, despite knowing that maybe it’s not the “adult” thing to do, consider the consequences and who they might affect. And if there are none, by all means, go for it. You’re not crazy. You’re entitled. You might feel crazy for a stalker mission or for intentionally making somebody jealous, but it happens to the best of us. Sometimes our feelings just come to a head, and the “crazy” way out is the fun way out—why fester in the unknown when you can stir the pot? This advice is not applicable to most adult situations, but point blank, don’t feel guilty or insane for wanting to wreak havoc around an ex… something or other. If you ever feel crazy, here’s a point of reference: I knew of a girl who posted public TikTok videos about how much she loved and missed her ex, complete with pictures of him in his underwear and referring to him as her “soulmate.” For reference, he broke up with her over text after a three-month relationship. Hopefully, you no longer feel that crazy.

Guys are quick to call a girl crazy, so much so that we feel we must act a certain way to appease the men in our lives. We live in a world where it’s legitimately normalized to manifest your perfect partner as opposed to…I don’t know, TEXTING THEM? Girls in our generation would rather hover over a $20 crystal and repeat a series of “affirmations” that they totally just found somewhere on the internet than make a move on their own.

“Crazy” has become such a universal concept that we’ve perhaps ignored the very things that drive us to a point of considerable insanity…

- Love - Lust - Jealousy - Anger The phrase “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is a narrative in desperate need of a rewrite (which Rachel Bloom does an excellent job of in her television show, I might add). When a relationship ends, women are driven to a whole host of all-consuming emotions, emotions that are beyond our control. The same goes when we have a crush, especially one that seems inaccessible. In a somewhat desperate attempt to control these emotions, we turn to unhealthy behaviors that attempt to placate our discontent. Something as simple as checking someone’s location or whether they liked your picture is your brain’s way of trying to cling to something that doesn’t exist.

Love is complex, messy, and often incomprehensible. This lack of understanding in adulthood can drive even the most intelligent woman to utter madness. Lust lies more within the body than within the mind, and it drives us to erratic, sexual, and sometimes regrettable behavior like sleeping with an ex, a friend, or a friend of an ex. Oxytocin, the “love hormone” functions as a drug and gives us a sense of accomplishment, or a “high.” Without it, we’re sent back to a low, and the trouble is that its primary source is physical touch. This chemical low, this need for touch, then pushes us further towards the “crazy” of fulfilling this need or lust.

Jealousy is ugly. Jealousy drives bitchiness. I’m the first to admit that I was always jealous of the girls who had boyfriends when I didn’t, and I don’t consider myself to be the “jealous type.” Growing up, there was this end of summer event at camp called the “Last Chance Dance.” This beautiful, blonde girl was “dating” my childhood crush, but she had another boy take her to the dance when her “boyfriend” couldn’t make it. I had no date, my hair was frizzy, and my strapless dress was too big. All I could think the entire night was that her dress probably fit perfectly, and her hair was blonde and straight, and every guy wanted to be with her.

Anger occurs when we feel we’ve been wrongfully harmed in some way, and perhaps we feel we need revenge or justification. Wanting to fight or argue might make us feel or sound “crazy,” but if someone has hurt you deeply enough to make you angry, you have every right to be driven to anger or, well, “madness.” There’s a reason for the phrase “madly in love.” We tend to feel a little “crazy” when we’re searching for something that’s missing. When my friends and I didn’t have any prospects on the horizon, we’d have to get creative and fill the love and lust voids with other sources of serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, and entertainment. Sometimes, my best friend and I would drive past guys’ houses just because we could—it’s not like we were doing anything. It was a funny way to pass time. At one point, I slid down in the passenger’s seat and was like, “this is actually insane,” but she reminded me that this was exactly what we should’ve been doing. “Girl crazy” is harmless. And yet there’s no “Boy crazy” to counteract “Girl crazy” other than referencing a girl being “crazy” about boys. This double standard has led us to criticize our own behaviors more so than we do those of guys who have given us the bare minimum.

When we hit that landmark “relationship,” we’re still led to wonder whether we should trust our counterpart. Girls will force their boyfriends to unfollow female friends on Instagram, wipe their phones clean of any past evidence of dating apps, and micromanage their every move. While this, from the male gaze, may come off as obsessive, this lack of pure trust is due to a long history of being screwed over. If the relationship is healthy, we should have no doubt that our partner isn’t contacting anybody else in a flirtatious way and just leave them be; be comfortably in love. But again, how often do you hear the phrase “comfortably in love?” Regardless of the nature of the relationship, obsessing over an idea of something that could be is sometimes all we have to keep ourselves sane in a world of guys who leave us alone when we’re blackout drunk or tell us that it “isn’t a date” moments after telling us that they like us.

Men can treat women with little to no respect and expect them to just take it, and when we find a guy who we really do like, our fear and past experiences get the best of us. Our trust has already been long destroyed. We want to protect the relationship and our own feelings at all costs, so we turn to manipulative self-help tricks or typical “crazy” acts like looking up their childhood home on Zillow. If girls are “crazy,” guys are crazier for driving us crazy.