Judgement alert! There may be some judgment leveled here. Hey, I’m no saint.
How come the crazy one’s never loose any sleep?
Is it their complete lack of a conscience that causes them to appear so slick, smug and impossibly fresh?
Not a hair out of place.
Barely a hint of the devil that lies within.
While those of us that have the misfortune to find ourselves in their orbit are sleep deprived, disheveled, walking disasters.
That will always bother me.
The fact that people who operate outside the constructs of polite society close their eyes at night and sleep the uninterrupted, peaceful sleep of the just.
Why is that?
How can it be?
The night before an arbitration with the attorneys for DWP to discuss the fact that their one hundred year old water main had burst and turned my store into an aquarium; I tossed and turned until the sheets were knotted up around my head and neck, fashioned into an unattractive turban/noose—and I ground my teeth down to nubs. Which left me the next morning gumming my toast, with a foggy brain and pronounced sheet marks on my face that didn’t fade until after lunch.
The team of He, She and It, that represented the water company, entered the room that morning laughing. Uproariously.
Like Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon had driven carpool. I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Out of the loop, like the funniest joke ever told was lost on me. Was that their plan?
They were meticulously coiffed and groomed, cool as the proverbial cucumbers, while I was drenched in flop sweat, permanently wrinkled and frantically struggling to remove a poppy-seed from between my two front teeth with my tongue.
Note to self: Don’t accept half a poppy-seed bagel when you’re out of coffee. And you forgot your water.
You’re going to need something to rinse your mouth with when the big guns enter the room.
If I’d had more sleep I would have remembered that.
They all seemed so nice, so genuinely happy to meet me; that is until the bell rang and we went to our respective corners. Then the gloves came off and the crazy started to show.
They made shit up. Their entire alibi was jack-crap.
With graphs, documents and flow charts. Listen, if you show me a flow chart, I’ll believe anything…almost.
Somehow they double teamed my attorney and me. In the most well crafted, legal babbly, thinly veiled insulting way, they pinned the whole thing on me. They made the accidental, midnight break of their trunk line water main seem like MY fault.
Business was slow, debt was high, it was 2009, and I need out—only I was too stupid to commit arson.
I know, crazy, right?
When we broke for lunch even I wanted to throw the book at me.
The picture they painted of me was that of a sad-sack, loser of a business woman. Which was exactly how I felt at the time.
I think my lawyer drank the Kool-Aid too—they were that convincing. She wouldn’t make eye contact, skulking in the corner on her phone, and then disappearing for the entire lunch break.
But you wanna know what trumps sleep deprivation? Rage. That’s what.
It also instantly removes sheet marks from your face.
It also over-rides all victim-hood.
Crazy and Rage are curious dance partners and they should never be left alone in a room together.
Let me tell you why. Crazy is so put together, so charming, pretty, and unflappable. Crazy looooooves a victim, she gets off on them, they get her panties wet.
Rage is no victim, he’s a gangster. He’s raw, he’s greasy and he talks real dirty. He wears a wife beater t-shirt and too much Aramis; and he has only one thing in his crosshairs—Crazy.
Crazy gets high on Rage and it quickly becomes a street-brawl.
But Rage is better than Sad, which is where I’d pitched my tent for eighteen months. Some say you can get caught in anger and never feel despair. The opposite had been true for me.
Sad victimhood. It’s like chum in the water to Crazy.
So Rage felt better. It felt…empowering. Sadness felt like quick-sand, Rage, like solid ground.
It got my attention and cleared my vision, so I could finally see the truth and it kicked Sad’s ass to the curb.
I locked myself in a public bathroom stall and raged for an hour before taking a walk around the building, coming to my senses, and finding my courage.
I knew my opponent. I was very familiar with Crazy.
You see, I had met her as a teenager in the form of my father’s second wife. I had witnessed her devour her victims and I was smart enough to remember that Rage threw her into a sort of drunken frenzy.
I also remembered that nothing can get to Crazy. Nothing touches their heart. There is no reasoning with Crazy. There is no sympathy, empathy or compassion and absolutely nothing is open for discussion.
They act as your judge, jury and executioner.
And the more they sense is at stake, the faster and louder the accusations come. Their aim is to keep you off-balance, on the ropes.
Remember they are rested, ready and strong after their peaceful nights sleep. How is that fair?
Because they get a buzz off this shit and they don’t care about anything other than winning.
I sure wasn’t feeling sad anymore, Rage had hatched a plan but I knew better than to let it enter that room. I waited outside the double doors of the conference room until I saw my attorney exit the elevator. I could hear the team of Crazy, Crazier and Craziest, whopping it up inside.
“You handle this, I’m leaving” I announced. I had her by the arm and was walking her back down a long hallway of endless doors, out of earshot of the hyenas.
“What?” she looked surprised.
“You don’t need me here. They can smell my fear and sadness, and well, their offer is beyond ridiculous. See what happens when they can’t focus on me. When they have to deal with you and only the facts.” We had walked in a circle making our way back toward the bank of elevators.
“Give me a number you’ll you settle at” she asked as she reached into her bag for paper and a pen. She seemed relieved, like the day could be salvaged. Like it could go back to a language she understood—the law.
I wrote a figure down. She looked and nodded in agreement, folding the paper into a small square and tucking into her suit-jacket pocket.
The elevator chimed, opening right on cue. People were packed like sardines, but as I stepped inside she grabbed my purse strap, making me turn around. “This could end today” she said with a hint of a smile, letting go as the doors closed.
A hairy mystery hand reached around me and pushed the button for LOBBY, getting me the hell out of that DWP building. I know it was Rage. I could smell his Aramis. But I made sure I left him behind, losing him in the crowd.
*I got the call a couple of hours later that they’d settled on the figure I’d written down. “Piece of cake” I remember her saying in a distracted voice, (yeah, once the chum had left the building), she was already on to her next case.
We all slept well that night.
I know some of you guys needed to hear this,
Carry on,
xox
