“Crazy” is not a singular–or definitive–experience

This is a line from my new anthology, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start The Conversation About Mental Health, which hits shelves today. But it’s not just a line that I wrote. It’s not just a line that’s true. It’s a line that, while editing this collection of essays and art, became more and more a mantra and way of understanding how mental illness works. It’s not singular. It’s not definitive. But, in conversations about mental health, there is a strange fixation on trying to define the word and trying to avoid using the word; eliminating the word from one’s vocabulary, however, singularizes and defines it as something not to be, as something that is too difficult to parse, tease apart, or knuckle into. As something not to say.

“Crazy” is the heart of the collection.

Unlike using the phrase “OCD” colloquially — “I’m so OCD” to describe what isn’t a debilitating illness but instead, a personality quirk of enjoying things neat, tidy, and precise — the term “crazy” isn’t tied to anything specific. It’s a term that has multiple meanings and experiences, that those who experience mental illness may find pride in, as much as those without mental illness may, indeed, experience periodically. It is a word that we’ve chosen to tiptoe around because it’s a term that’s slippery and uncomfortable to think about and sit with. No easy definition means no easy way to qualify the experience.

I’ve spent the last five years of my life exploring my own mental illness. When I hit the lowest point in my life, I had a support system that encouraged me to talk to my doctor and get help. That visit led to a diagnosis of depression — which I’d suspected — but also anxiety. It was anxiety that fueled my depression, and until I could better manage that, I wouldn’t be able to better manage my depression. Medication helped, especially after making some dosage adjustments. When I could finally dig around inside my mind with more clarity and see that it was anxiety holding me back from trying and experiencing new things, I was able to step into a yoga studio for the first time and add another tool to my arsenal for managing my mental wellness. I still take medication, but coupled with the work I’ve done practicing yoga, I’ve found a system to manage my anxiety and depression and better tease out truths from the lies my brain tells me.

(Don’t) Call Me Crazy was born from these two things: what it means to be “crazy” and what it means to take care of your mental health, whether or not you live with a mental illness. It’s a collection full of varied experiences with being crazy and with being “crazy”; with struggling to identify with a mental illness and with leaning into that mental illness with pride; with finding techniques to manage when you’re not feeling your best and with finding comfort in knowing that sometimes being “okay” is the best thing you can be. It’s about cracking open the doors that are often left shut because opening them and turning on the light means coming to terms with ideas and concepts that are difficult to understand, to place or arrange.

Although the book covers a vast array of mental illness experiences, from addiction to disordered eating, from OCD to borderline personality disorder, from suicide ideation to depression, it also covers some things which might be surprising to see in a book like this. The focus being mental health, as opposed to strictly mental illness, means that the book includes pieces on autism and neurodiversity, as well as tips and tricks for self-care and finding confidence in tricky situations.

I put this book together piece by piece with care and thought and an end goal that it’s a tool to help foster conversation about mental health. It’s my hope that teens will see themselves in it somewhere, as well as better empathize with people whose experiences they’ve seen but never quite understood. It’s also my hope that adults will read and discuss this book, then pass it along to the young people in their lives.

As I’ve said many times, I do think today’s teens are really doing the work when it comes to talking about and changing the discourse when it comes to mental health. Someone mentioned to me that that was a lot of pressure to put on teens, but I don’t think it is: they’re doing it without prompting because they’re better equipped to talk about mental health now than any other generation has been, thanks to the internet, to their peers, to the media they’re exposed to, and to simply living in a culture that’s challenging to navigate. This book is for those teens and for anyone else ready to have even more tools in their pockets.

It’s for anyone who is ready and willing to move beyond a comfortable misunderstanding of the word “crazy” and into a murky, tumultuous reality of living with a brain that doesn’t always make sense in a world that doesn’t always make sense. It’s raw, it’s honest, it’s difficult, and yet, it’s also full of hope, light, and love.

I’m spectacularly proud of (Don’t) Call Me Crazy and the 33 folks who contributed their work. They opened up in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine two years ago, and I’m lucky to have had their trust. I’m honored to have this book in the world.

I hope you’ll pick it up.

You can buy (Don’t) Call Me Crazy wherever books are sold. If you’d like to purchase it from my local independent bookstore, you can. Just search for the book by title. I’ll be doing some traveling for the book, and if you’d like to see me — especially if you’re in the Chicago metro area or in New York City or Ithaca — find the details on my personal website.

Thank you for helping me make this book a reality by supporting my work and supporting the work of the brave and unbelievably talented contributors in this collection. Together, we can all make the world a little bit of a better, safer, more supportive place.

“Opening up about mental health is difficult but necessary, asserts the editor of this thought-provoking anthology. Libba Bray personifies her obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, while Stephanie Kuehn describes life with misophonia. Adam Silvera dispels the myth that successful or cheerful individuals don’t experience depression; Emery Lord seethes at the ignorant remarks about suicide she overhears at a Vincent van Gogh exhibit. Contributors also examine gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, as in Hannah Bae’s exploration of her Korean family’s reluctance to seek help for her mother’s schizophrenia. The rare lackluster entry never detracts from the whole. As in Jensen’s Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, illustrations and a peppy design enhance this scrapbooklike volume. VERDICT Misconceptions about mental health still abound, making this honest yet hopeful title a vital selection for libraries.” — STARRED review from School Library Journal

A lively, compelling anthology […] the raw, informal approach to the subject matter will highly appeal to young people who crave understanding and validation. A valuable addition to library collections and for use by school counselors. This highly readable and vital collection demonstrates the multiplicity of ways that mental health impacts individuals.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Jensen (Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World, 2017) gathers together another varied, empowering collection of personal essays, poetry, artwork, and comics about the many ways people experience mental illness. Confessional and conversational, the contributions cover a wide array of conditions, treatments, and ways to manage symptoms, and while it can occasionally be a mixed bag, the best contributions are deeply resonant. Shaun David Hutchinson emphasizes that “Depression . . . may live in your skin, but it does not control you”; Emery Lord recounts visiting a Van Gogh exhibit during a depressive episode in a stirring, sharply funny essay; Hannah Bae describes how her troubled homelife contributed to her own disordered thinking; and Monique Bedard offers a moving prose poem about the pernicious, lasting effects of the systemic abuse of Native women. With this diverse array of contributors offering a stunning wealth of perspectives on mental health, teens looking for solidarity, comfort, or information will certainly be able to find something that speaks to them. Resources and further reading make this inviting, much-needed resource even richer.” –– Booklist Review