The way other people, "normal" people, see us that have a mental illness (or two, or three) can be seen in the media, including social media. The word crazy is used both flippantly and to purposely hurt people. It is defined in many ways, depending upon the dictionary you use. These include insane, demented, flawed, passionate, unusual, and many others.
While I use the word "crazy" to define myself, I do not use it in the context of others. I am known for saying that the word does not hurt me when it's used to describe me because I am mentally ill, therefore I am crazy. On a deeper level I feel that I use this word in an effort to keep others from using it against me. Believe it or not, people don't even have to use that or any other label in order to make things hard for me.
When I first began to have psychotic symptoms, before I even was admitting to myself that it was actually happening, I drunkenly spewed the fact of my father's illness and how I beginning to show signs of the same thing to a guy I had just started dating and the man who I now claim as my best friend. Apparently I also tried to get into a car that was not my own and shattered my cell phone on the cement. When I woke up the next day and I was told about what happened, I was embarrassed and shocked that I would say such a thing, and even more shocked about how truthful the things I had said were.
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