I Don't Want to Be Crazy

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For Emily Kozlow—who saw the worst

It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before…to test your limits…to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

—Anaïs Nin

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

PART I

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PART II

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PART III

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PART IV

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PART V

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Author's Note

Acknowledgments

Other Books By

Copyright

Each day another friend leaves for college.
Yesterday Abe, today Claire,
tomorrow Matt.
When it’s my turn,
nobody will be left
to say good-bye to me.

It’s crazy that I’m leaving
everything and everyone I know,
but there are things I want to leave behind,
things I don’t have room for—
like this version of me,
like Jason.
Sometimes I call him my boyfriend,
but I know better.

I’m excited to leave,
to start something new,
but it scares me.
And what scares me even more
is that things are supposed to get harder than this—
harder than living in my parents’ house,
harder than dealing with Jason,
harder than high school.
I can’t be a kid anymore.

All my neighborhood friends and I
go to one party after another,
drinking, getting high—
the same stupid stuff we always do
in the playground of P.S. 98
or down at the field.
Now we call them good-bye parties,
but they’re really just another excuse to get high.

I am sitting behind the register at the theater
looking out the window
at the cars speeding by,
thinking, I can’t believe it’s finally over.
I am out of high school.

I’ll never again have to wear that polyester kilt
with the stapled hem and melted hole
where Audrey accidentally ashed on me.
I’ll never get detention for wearing combat boots
or have to take the Q46 bus halfway across Queens.

I don’t ever have to sit in the senior lounge
wishing I could play my
music without Justin calling Tori Amos
Tour of My Anus.
I don’t have to pretend to like people
who are assholes and call me flat-chested.

I don’t have to be treated like crap
just because I’m not popular.

Applying to college was a disaster.
My parents had their choice for me,
and I had mine.
But since they were paying the bills,
there was no room for compromise.

We fought about my application essay for weeks.
It had to be perfect—
revised and reread dozens of times,
marked up in red pen
until it was bloody.

In the end my personal statement
was more my mother’s than my own
and fiction became fact
because it sounded better.

It’s been like this
for as long as I can remember—
writing and rewriting homework,
book reports, and papers
until they were not mine—
until they were perfect.

I don’t understand
how my teachers never noticed.
How could they believe
all those words were mine?
Every time I handed in a paper
I hoped I’d get caught.

A week before I leave,
Jason picks me up after work
and we go down to the woods
at the edge of the bay
where there’s a washed-up diving platform.
The moon is bright enough
that we can find the path,
but I still hold his hand—
let him guide me
around branches and rocks.

When we get to the platform
it’s covered with slugs.
We kick them off and lie down.
It doesn’t matter
that there are trails of ooze.
It doesn’t matter
that it is low tide
and the mosquitoes are out.
All that matters
is that his hands cover me
like my clothes should.

In the morning I wake up, shower,
see that I am covered in bites, some bleeding
from where I must have scratched them in the night.
I spend the day at work
counting bites, rubbing on cortisone,
and thinking of Jason’s hands.

It sounds nice,
but it’s not.
It sounds easy,
but it isn’t.
The next day Jason is a half hour late
to get me from work.
No phone call.
No explanation.
Just like always,
I am an afterthought.
Just like the night he promised
we’d be alone and showed up with two friends
ready to smoke a blunt.
Just like the afternoon
he said he was going to pick me up
after his laundry finished drying
and never showed
because he fell asleep.

It’s been like this ever since Christmas,
when he kissed me
and then told me he’d been waiting
a long time to do that.
Ever since then
I’ve been waiting
for him to do something, anything
to show he cares,
for him to be the one to ask me to hang out,
waiting for the phone to ring,
checking to see if the phone is broken,
or if someone’s already on the line.
I’m glad I’m leaving.
I don’t want to wait anymore.

I’m surrounded by stacks of towels,
linens still in the package,
jeans and sweaters,
jumbo boxes of tampons,
soap, and shampoo.
I’m listening to Ani DiFranco so loud
my parents are going to start to yell.

By the end of the week
everything needs to be packed
in these giant plastic tubs
like leftovers
and in garbage bags
like trash.

Everything I own,
everything I care about, is at my feet:
a Valentine’s Day card from Jason
that reads
I wish for you,
a collage Claire made for my birthday
of handpainted portraits of the two of us,
a photo of me and Audrey
sitting in the back row of the Q79 bus,
a drawing I made in 1983.

I can’t wait
to get out of this room
with its stupid flowered wallpaper,
out of this house
with all its rules,
out of this neighborhood
where everyone knows each other.

I try folding things neatly,
even though I’m a slob.
I am starting something new.
I want to do this right.

A couple of nights before I leave
Jason tries again to get me to have sex with him.
We are in his bed when he gives me a speech
about how I won’t want to lose my virginity
to some stranger in college.
He reminds me
that he is here,
next to me,
safe.

But I’ve already given him everything else.
This is the only thing I
have left.

I’m leaving tomorrow
and saying good-bye to Jason tonight.
I don’t think I can handle it
if he kisses me.
It will only make things harder.
It will only make me cry
to kiss him,
to feel the emptiness.

I wonder if he feels it.
I wonder if he even cares.

What a fitting ending with Jason.
No hug.
No kiss.
Nothing.

Just like always, he was late
and I was pissed.
This time it was the weed’s fault.
It knocked him on his ass, hard.
He was pale, almost green.
He could barely speak.
His best friend Nate was there
to confirm the story.
I could see in Jason’s face
that it was the truth,
but it was too late.

I can’t fall asleep.
It’s like the night before camp,
except I don’t come home after six weeks.
It’s like the night before an exam
that I haven’t studied for enough.
It’s like the night before my birthday,
knowing my expectations will never be lived up to.
It’s like the night before a vacation,
and I’m terrified to fly.

It is the night before everything.

My roommate Sarah is in our dorm room
when my parents and I get upstairs with the first load.
She is one of the kids I met
at the overnight open house in the spring.
None of us knew if we’d been accepted
and it was strange to think
that we might make friends we’d never see again.
That night, in the woods, behind one of the dorms,
a bunch of us got stoned and swore that if we got in,
we’d go, be friends, request to be roommates—
Sarah and I,
Josh and Adam.
We’d be safe from the freaks.

When I walk into our dorm room,
I drop my stuff on the floor,
and Sarah and I scream and hug.
I can’t believe we are really here,
that all of this is finally starting.

Sarah’s stuff is already unpacked
and neatly laid out.

She’s managed to make her side of the room into a home.
I can’t believe she moved in by herself.

She is quick to excuse herself.
Maybe she can tell that my family is the type
to scream and yell no matter what we do.
Maybe she wants to leave before we ask her to help.
Either way, I’m jealous.

We carry everything up the five flights
because the elevators are backed up.
All my clothes are packed in garbage bags.
My life looks like a dump.

My mother carries a lamp,
then positions herself on the extra-long twin bed.
She supervises for the rest of the afternoon
as my father and I go back and forth
to the Volvo and up and down the stairs.

I wish I didn’t have to do this with my parents.
I wish we didn’t have to fight
about where everything goes
and have the other kids in my suite hear
and think I am a baby.

My parents leave after the big stuff is in place,
the photos and posters are hung and level,
and my father has changed into a clean polo shirt.

I am finally alone
and it is wonderfully quiet.

That first night Sarah goes out
and Josh comes over.
We’ve e-mailed since the spring,
exchanged stupid high school stories,
recommended books and CDs,
and speculated on what it would be like
when we actually got to school.

We smoke a joint
and Josh lies down in Sarah’s bed—
eyes shut, hands folded across his chest
with his cigarette between his fingers.
He doesn’t move for a long time.

“Josh?” No answer.
Louder, “Josh?”
No answer.

Is he sleeping? Dead?
I go over to see if he is breathing,
but I am too high to tell.

I lean in closer,
and closer.
I am going to have to put a mirror under his nose.
I can’t believe that I killed someone
my first night of college.

I am just inches from Josh’s face
when he opens one eye
and smiles at me.
I say, “I thought you were dead.”
He starts laughing
and I fall back on my ass
and laugh harder
than I have ever laughed before.

When I met Adam in the spring
there was an instant attraction.
I felt it the first minute I saw him—
the back of him, really.

I was walking behind him during the campus tour,
watching his hair swish.
That night we stayed up until four in the morning,
and talked about high school
and wanting to get out of our parents’ houses.
I knew he felt the connection too,
but he had a girlfriend
and I had Jason,
so we just slept on nearby couches.

The night after I move into the dorm,
Adam and I go for a walk
while everyone else is at the freshman meet-and-greet.
It’s the first time we’ve spoken since the spring.
He doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore
and we kiss in the grass
by one of the outdoor sculptures—
giant yellow metal beams
that look like reaching legs.
We can hear laughing and cheering
coming from the party across the green.
I feel like the cheering is for me,
for us.

This campus is tiny compared to others I’ve seen,
but it’s still a mystery to navigate.
They’ve given us a map
that I wouldn’t be caught dead with
so there’s no chance of getting through the day
without asking where something is.

The dining hall is the worst.
It’s packed with people—
people who know their way around,
who have friends,
who know where they like to sit
and how to balance their tray
without spilling their coffee
into their cereal.

In high school I knew the rules.
I knew which girls were my friends
and which ones were fake.
I knew the fastest way
to spread a rumor was to tell Lauren
and the fastest way to the lunchroom
was to take the hallway by art class.
I knew my friends sat at the last table on the left
and the cool kids sat at the last table on the right.

I knew that after lunch
my friends hung out in the stairway by the gym,
and if you were careful
you could slip out the East exit
to smoke a cigarette.

Part of my financial aid package
is a job in Food Services.
I was a waitress a few summers ago,
but this is humiliating.
I wear an apron, rubber gloves,
carry food back and forth,
clean up tables,
scrape uneaten food off plates.
I go home stinking
like food and sweat and steam.
I’m actually glad we have to wear a baseball cap.
At least I can pull it down over my eyes.

Jason’s photo is tacked
to the bulletin board above my desk.
It’s in a corner almost completely
covered by bits of paper with phone numbers,
postcards from friends, and other junk.
I’m sure nobody would even notice him
in all that mess, but he’s there.

I miss him.
I hear myself say that
and I know it’s ridiculous.
How could I miss someone who was never there?
Especially since I just hooked up with Adam,
but I do.
I miss things about Jason that used to drive me crazy,
like how he never gets angry.
I wish I could be calm all the time,
never neurotic, never obsessive.
I miss how things were familiar with him,
even if it was the familiar feeling
of being let down.

Living with Sarah the first few weeks
is like an extended sleepover party.
We put on mud masks,
sit around, smoke cigarettes, get high,
and listen to the Violent Femmes.

Our dorm room isn’t big,
but at least we’re not in a triple or a quad.
Sarah and I have been moving around our furniture
to get the room just right.
Now our beds are on opposite sides of the room
and there is some sense of privacy.

The best part of our room is the window seat.
Every room on campus has one,
but ours looks out into the woods.
The leaves have already started to change color.

I can be anything I want here.
No one has to know
that I wasn’t popular in high school,
that I’ve never stayed out all night,
that I’m a virgin,
that everything I see reminds me of Jason.

I am born again here.
I’m taking art classes, writing classes, dance classes—
all the things there was no room for before.
I reread Anaïs Nin’s journals
and write in my own
sitting underneath this one tree on the green
with a curved trunk that perfectly fits my back.

I am curled up in my window seat
watching some kids playing Frisbee
when my parents call.
They say my sister isn’t going back
for her junior year of college.
They say she needs to take some time off
and will be moving home to figure things out.
I imagine her back in our house, with our parents,
and it makes me feel like I am the older sister.

Then they ask how classes are,
how bad working in the dining hall really is.
They want to know if I’ve made any nice friends,
or met any nice boys,
and before we get off the phone
they say, “It’s all up to you.
You’re the one in school now.”

I think it’s supposed to be a joke,
but it’s really not funny.

Meeting new people
feels like dating.
I try to find someone I like,
casually start a conversation,
and hope we have things in common.
Only sometimes when I talk to people
I have no idea what they’re saying.
I only hear my voice in my head
as their lips move, telling me
if they looked hard enough
they would see fear behind my eyes.

Things move fast here.
Adam’s already ended things,
saying, “This is too much, too soon.”
It was just like when Jason and I broke up
for the first time, a few weeks before my prom.
As he told me that he couldn’t deal with me
trying to deal with him,
I tuned him out, focused on some leaves
blowing back and forth.
I did it again in Adam’s room,
stared at his leopard-print sheets
and thought to myself,
my heart can’t take this again.

The weather has turned
and Sarah and I put on jackets
before we leave for an off-campus party.
It’s dark—
not like New York City dark,
but pitch-black-middle-of-nowhere dark.
It feels like when Claire and I snuck out at camp,
only this time we aren’t going to get caught
and I can smell dry leaves in the air
instead of earthy humidity.

We cut through the trees and someone’s backyard
and end up on a gravel road.
I can see the house in the distance,
smell the smoke from the bonfire,
and hear the hum of people and music.

It feels weird being here,
watching people talk—
people who must know each other.
I try to look comfortable.

I try to look relaxed.
I try to drink the beer,
but I can’t stand still.

Sarah and I walk around
and meet a pair of freshmen, Brian and Steve.
I start talking to Brian,
manage to get down my beer, fill my cup again,
and lose Sarah.

Brian walks me back to my room
and before I know it, we are kissing
and my top is off.
It feels good to kiss him,
to have his weight on top of me.

We are only kissing a few minutes
before he goes to unbutton my jeans.
I pull his hand back
and he lets it get tangled in my hair.
It doesn’t take long
before he is back at my pants.
I move his hand, but he tries again.
I break away and just stare at him.

Is he stupid?
When I tell him to go
he gives me this wet-eyed-puppy look,
gets out of bed, picks up his sweatshirt,
and leaves.

I move through friends quickly.
I rarely see Josh anymore
and things with Sarah aren’t as easy
as I thought they would be.
We barely talk now.

We are all looking for someone
to stay with,
someone to be permanent.
The possibilities are overwhelming,
they make me restless.
There were forty kids in my graduating class
and here there are more than seven hundred.

I hang out inseparably with someone
for a few days.
We devour each other,
tell all our stories,
and then move on.

Things here are not stable.

I think I might be turning into a slut.
I stay out late,
don’t tell anyone where I’m going
or where I’ve been.

It’s barely been two months
and I’ve hooked up with four guys:
Adam;
Brian;
Tim, who kissed like a frog;
Bob, who didn’t believe I was a virgin.

I’m not used to there being so many guys around,
so many parties, so many people who don’t know me.

The not-so-funny part about Adam
is that now he’s got a girlfriend
only a few weeks after telling me
he didn’t want a relationship.
She’s gorgeous, with blond hair,
green eyes, big tits.

At first I thought
he was a lying shit.
But now I see
he just didn’t want
a relationship with me.

This strange thing happens
when I am lying in bed with a guy.
I cannot breathe.
My breaths are either too deep
or too shallow.
Too slow or too quick.

Feeling the guy’s chest rise against
my back confuses my own rhythms.
I feel like I have to match his
and I can never seem to catch up.
I just lie there, waiting
for our breaths to sync
or to be able to pull myself away
enough to breathe on my own,
uninfluenced.

It’s crazy, but I miss Jason.
With him there were never any surprises.
I could always count on him letting me down.

I shut my eyes
and I see Jason.
I see his skin.
I can feel him kissing me.

I should take down his picture.
It shouldn’t even be here.

I don’t understand what’s happening.
I am sitting in Writing Seminar
and it feels like my hands are shaking,
like I’ve got a tremor.
I try hard to focus, stare at my hands,
but I can’t tell whether or not they’re shaking.
I don’t understand why I can’t tell.
I should be able to tell
if my own hands are shaking.
My eyesight can’t be trusted.
I’d try sitting on my hands,
but that would make people stare,
if they haven’t already noticed the shaking.
I try clasping my hands together,
but that’s no good, either.
I can see myself with my hands together,
banging them up and down on the desk
like a piston, like a cartoon sledgehammer.
I see myself doing it,
but I know I’m not.
I can’t be.
If I were, people would be staring.

When class is over,
I am tired and sweaty.
I didn’t see anyone looking at me,
so I must not have done anything crazy.
Maybe I’m getting sick
or maybe I’m finally addicted to cigarettes.
This feeling, the sweating, the shaking—
it must be a nicotine fit.

I go outside with the other smokers,
suck down a few cigarettes before class,
hoping it will make me feel better,
hoping it will calm my nerves.

A friend of Sarah’s from psych class
comes by to pick her up for a party.
Her name is Rebecca.
When I introduce myself
she says that we’ve met before—
that she remembers my eyes.
I feel kind of stupid
for not remembering her,
but she doesn’t seem to care
and invites me to go with them to the party.

When we get there,
Rebecca and Sarah start dancing.
I lean on one of the speakers instead,
let the bass crawl over my back like fingers
and watch kids in big pants
dance in the light and smoke.

Rebecca grabs my hand
and pulls me onto the dance floor.
I can’t stop watching the people around me—
watching what they do,
watching to see if they are watching me
dancing like an idiot.