Once upon a time, in a different world, I had a conversation with someone who I’ll never forget but probably will never see again, and that conversation basically came down to this: my friend (who was extraordinarily bright) had once been institutionalized, and when he was in the loony bin, the feeling was that the INsane people were IN, and the other people, like the nurses and doctors, were OUT – or, as my friend said, OUTSANE. In this world, described to me so eloquently, the real world was inside the ward, and all the patients were the rational ones. The crazys and the true psychotics were the people on the outside. The Outsane.

I am not an outsane, or an insane, I don’t think. I guess I like to believe I am on the perimeter of something resembling sane. But what is sane? Lingusitics, basically. Insane? Outsane? How do you describe these, personally? The inability to deal with emotions, or the total lack of emotion? A blank stare? A careful answer? A raw look? A sharp fingernail in your jugular? Pissing in your cereal?

We are all capable of all of these things. We are all insane, and outsane. OK, maybe you are a little unsure that you would piss in someone’s cereal, and I agree – I am too outsane to ever do something like that. But what I think I really want to get at here is (getting back to ME), by spending too much time alone (which I have been doing alot of) I am cutting myself off from what makes me fucking write in the first place.

Tonight I met, out of the blue but kind of not, a man who told me so many things about his life that I felt I should be charging an hourly rate. But, his stories were well-told and sort of riveting. I asked him why he was telling me all this stuff, and he said, you never know where you are going to get information from. That, faithful reader, is what it is all about. WHERE is that random insight coming from? It could come from anywhere, it could shoot out from around a fake tree at a lame hotel, it could come from a busboy refilling your coffee in a diner in Nowhereville. It can come from anywhere. These total randoms don’t know how strong I am, they just see right through my shit. Yours, too. Don’t try to hide. Hiding is a human condition, and we are all guilty of it.

I ended up telling my stories too – brutal, harrowing, Iwassofuckedup stories. And in the end it came down to one thing, a response from a therapist to my new friend, in a cab in Milwaukee, to the question “what.” (I say, just “what,” because that is the question, basically. Just add on whatever you want to “what.”)

People just want to love, and be loved, is what the therapist said. It is easy to poke holes in this, as a single woman with no intention whatsover of getting into a relationship at the moment. But, there are alot of other kinds of relationships and alot of other kinds of devices to get love. Some of which I am guilty of, I think.

Is this what it comes down to? Loving and being loved? Probably, it is. When I think about love, the love I have for my family and my friends, or when some stranger in the bar reminds me about how important love is, I just want to lay down my sword – and it is big – and let love in. I’m not scared but, I AM scared. Life is scary, whether you are insane, outsane, or inbetween sane. Love, even if it makes people totally, uh, insane, is what holds us all together. It’s fucking crazy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 6th, 2005 at 10:02 pm and is filed under How do we all stay grounded when the world is spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.