Every now and again – like most women, I’m telling myself – I have pulled what I like to call a Crazy Girl, defined succinctly by Urban Dictionary as “the phenomenon where girls act irrationally because of insecurities.” With that conceded, let’s just say a few times or so in my years I have emotionally reverted from a mature, grown woman to a PMSing 15-year-old schoolgirl, complete with irrational hurt, unreasonable anger, and an un-ending mass of tears.

I have a short list of occasions in which CG has made a show, and I’m not proud of any of them. Thankfully my moments don’t have me stabbing anyone with a fork or making a public scene, but the absence of such drama-laden CG may make the whole thing all the more inappro-pro, since instead the occasion is stealthy, cloaked in mild passive aggressiveness, and sneaks up on the recipient when they seem to have no idea that hurt existed in the first place.

The process often begins by the arrival of small packages – a hurt feeling here, maybe another there, until my over-processed brain painstakingly obsesses, reviewing things to a bloody pulp. By lifelong habit – one I am making pointed efforts to ditch – in time, I nurture the small pains into larger ones, contributing my full attention to them, drawing upon a myriad of jaundiced emotions, and morphing the smallest of victimized mole hills into large, obstructive mountains – mountains I find difficult to traverse over the pits and falls of my self-made mental bruising.

And then Crazy Girl makes an appearance. Unhinged, she throws grand, and rarely thought through fits, tossing out her pain like daggers, quickly souring the environment for not only the person at the end of the CG sword, but for me, as I am her, crying over things that may not be important, spitting angry words – perhaps based on an entirely unintentional hurt – that I cannot draw back into my mouth.

I’d like to say there’s a sense of satisfaction in outing my hurt to the person who first issued a reason for it – whether they did so unknowingly or not, but there never is- especially considering the derisory method of delivery. Rather, undoubtedly, CG, in her final counteractive Bitch move, brings on several after effects of her diatribe.

Insomnia is the most immediate, as I turn over and over in my brain the action I took, and both the cause and affect of it, stirring up a gamut of emotions that range from sadness to hysteria to absolute embarrassment. And then I cringe.

Next, as my “grown up” thinking process returns, I begin to consider the receiver of CG’s antics, the person blindsided by her, accosted with blame and anger, her outstretched fingers poking at their chest during her tirade. How had their day been altered by way of Crazy Girl’s Bitch’tics? And then I cringe.

Finally, reason: the crazy was desperately unnecessary. The grown up in me could have prevailed – and she should have, instead behaving like an adult, and using her big girl words as opposed to her immature and emotional conduct. And then I cringe.

But, I can only cringe for so long – the did can not be undid, after all. And so the aftermath always finds me humbly taking my lumps, and attempting to amend the crazy while also acknowledging what had brought the Bitch out in the first place. And then: the hopeful mending of fences after the hurricane, the ever optimistic gluing of a broken vase……

With any luck, Crazy Girl stays on permanent vacation, but I’m not holding my breath forever. After all, like any of us, I am still yet a Human Becoming. And as I do my best to own my shit and learn from my mistakes, I expect her infrequent visits will become all the more so, and I can get some well-deserved sleep, already. And, as well, holy best wishes for well-deserved sleep to the poor recipients of CG’s wrath. She’s such a Bitch, keeping us all up like that.