I'm afraid of crazy

Insanity has always scared me. Not the gentle kind of cuckoo, the kind where smurfs or eggplants whisper funny little things to you, and not the kind where you just mutter to yourself or forget that you have bumble bees strapped to your shirt with string. No, the batshit crazy gonna eat your heart through a straw and dance in the street with ripped off penises dangling over your ears kind of insanity. If ever anyone asks me what I'm afraid of it goes like this: insanity, spiders, and sharks. But that which terrifies also fascinates. Movies like House on Haunted Hill creep me right the fuck out. And then there's Quills, which was brilliant and disgusting and I was riveted. There's an old children's mental hospital here in town that people claim is haunted. Friends and I used to scare ourselves silly and go out there and wander around. Well, not so much. I mean, we'd drive up and park in front of the rundown, dirty building, drink a few beers, get scared, and leave. I used to read a lot of true crime, especially having to do with serial killers. The Alienist is one of my favorite books. The memories of Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos and Danny Rolling still linger here in Florida. I would read and watch everything I could get my hands on about Jack the Ripper, and even went on the Jack the Ripper Walk in London. I have a lighter from The Ten Bells somewhere. Isn't that horrible? Serial killer souvenir. Last night I watched Sybil for the first time. What an amazing woman (barring the MPD naysayers). It was difficult to watch, but fascinating, too, how she struggled out of it, how the mind works to protect us from harm. (And here when I'm talking about criminal insanity I mean her mother, not Sybil.)* This is where creepiness and the macabre and dark lyricism and scaring yourself to get that jolt go by the wayside, where real pain and hurt and grief and more damage than anyone should ever have to bear come in. That split, that rift, that dark twist that makes someone a monster is terrifying to me. The part we can't control. It's all shadows and something under the bed or just behind you breathing down your neck. Or inside your head, clawing to get. *Apparently there's a new Sybil coming out this year.