Call me crazy

Call me crazy for remembering exactly what was said, word for word. Call me crazy for writing it down when it happened, because I already knew you'd try to rewrite it later. Call me crazy for not laughing it off, not letting it slide, not being the bigger person for the fortieth time in a row.

Here's what nobody tells you about being called crazy. It's a strategy. It's the fastest way to make someone stop talking without ever having to answer for what they said, to make everyone else wonder if I'm stable enough to be believed. That's always been cheaper than the truth.

"Crazy" does a very specific job. It takes something inconvenient, something that threatens the story a person or a family or an institution has been telling about itself, and it relocates the problem. Suddenly the problem isn't what happened. The problem is that I keep bringing it up.

This move performed by exes, by colleagues, by fake friends, and by snakes who call themselves family. It is performed by toxic systems that are supposed to protect people and instead protect themselves. The move is always the same three steps: deny, minimize, then question the sanity of whoever won't stop asking questions. It works because most people would rather believe someone is crazy than believe someone they trusted did something wrong.

Telling the truth when everyone around you needs you to stay quiet costs you events you don't get invited to, relationships that quietly evaporate, a reputation you have to rebuild in rooms that never asked for your side. It costs sleep. It costs the easy version of yourself, the one who could've just moved on, let it go and kept the peace.

Some of us came here to say the thing out loud.

Call me crazy for having a good memory. Call me crazy for having receipts. Call me crazy for refusing to be the only one who has to carry what actually happened.

Every single time, it loses a little more power. It is obvious what it actually is: not an observation, but a weapon. Weapons only work as long as the target is afraid to notice they're being aimed at.

Not afraid. Call me whatever you need to call me.

I'm still going to tell the truth.