In the South we Parade CRAZY

A sign posted for Southern Decadence is the theme song and sound track for my life:
"In the South we don't hide CRAZY. We parade it on the front porch and give it a cocktail!"

From my early memories, I recall a mother who had a cocktail and sat on the porch for the world to see, and I was so embarrassed. That same beautiful woman went on to drink many more cocktails, but was often sedated because she was Crazy. Crazy like arrange clothing on the floor of our numerous rented houses as a form of communication.

She believed that the world was out to get her, and I guess that it did. Spending time in Mandeville, that was the name of the Crazy House where my mother was often sent to get her medication straight, only resulted in various labels, none of which were helpful.

For a long time, she was branded paranoid schizophrenic, or later manic-depressive, later still, bi-polar. None of these labels actually, nor adequately described Marie's day-to-day life. She went from hosting the parade to long stays at the hospital, where the medications, like thorazine made her shuffle alone in a stupor. We never knew how to RSVP to these events.

I met Chris Sizemore after my mother died. She is the woman about whom the Three Faces of Eve was written. After spending the night at my home, I felt a great sense of relief. She had 30 plus personalities and two healthy adult children. I felt a deep sense of peace after sharing our stories through the night.

I was President of the local Mental Health Society and she was our guest speaker. Listening to her amazing story certainly brings light to those of us who have relegated our crazies to the attic.
Hell, after all of those tries, we would have been better off just handing her a cocktail and letting her sit on the porch.

My father was forever telling her that she was crazy. Her mother spoke the same language, so I learned this talk as well. Hiding the family secret is so difficult for a child and the collective adult family. Such energy wasted, far better to take out the family crazies and place them on the porch for the world to see. God knows hiding them in the attic creates a fire hazard. It is crowded up there, and rather time consuming, and costly to have them psychologically removed.

Years of therapy is far too expensive. There is an island in the Pacific where one is allowed to run amuck once a year. What a far more sensible way to expose the attic secrets, and cleanse the collective unconscious.

Here in New Orleans we give our crazies several days a year to parade through the streets: Mardi Gras, Southern Decadence, and any other day of the week when the stress level rises to red alert.
One may get a drive up daiquiri, sit on the porch and drink up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_amok