Insane?? or not!!!

My mother told me many stories when I was a child. No, not your usual mother goose stuff. Not Halloweenish scary stories either. I mean stories of other peoples’ misfortunes. Whether it was a terminal illness, a crippling injury, or some kind of mental torment. All the stories had the same theme- “Life is Misery.” Not really something a five year old needs to know. I don’t know if I was five, six, or ten. I just know that I was very young. One of the stories that I think of from time to time was the one about the friend that “lost her mind.” This woman apparently demonstrated her insanity by sitting home and sewing orange peels together. It doesn’t matter whether or not the story was true. The point was, it was very frightening that a person might be so tortured mentally that sewing orange peels together would seem like a perfectly good idea. I don’t remember the rest of the story. I got stuck on the image of this woman with her needle, thread, and basket of orange peels. That was enough for me. I would imagine they took her away. That’s what they seemed to do in the ‘50s. For many years, this definition of crazy would serve as my measuring stick. Whenever the familiar loss of control feeling would surface, I would think of the orange peel story. As crazy as I felt, at least I didn’t sit mindlessly stitching the peels together. What a relief !! Well, let me say this….about fifty years have gone by since those days and the orange peels are looking more and more like a potential sweater!
I have made it this far with my particular brand of craziness. There have been hospital stays etc. All and all I’ve weathered things pretty well. The sense of humor is a blessing. Then again, there is always a level of emotional torment. Medication keeps it under control, but life situations cause flare-ups. I’ve changed what I can to survive, but old feelings hang on. I’m still that vulnerable kid in so many ways. Everything is a chemical imbalance these days. The orange peel lady would have been given some good meds. She would have probably seen the error of her ways and would only have dreamed about oranges. Do you know what I think? I think those orange peels stopped the madness in the woman’s life. The insanity was what was happening to her before the orange peel incident. This is what happens when life is too much to bear. Sometimes you just need to rest your mind. I think it’s time for a produce run.