How to go fucking crazy

Allow women space for emotional unraveling

My current favorite song is “Dealer” by Lana Del Rey. Instead of singing the chorus, Lana screams it. Her opening line being, “I don’t want to live.”

I realized just how much I loved this song when I was driving through the mountains at night while on my way home from school. I screamed the chorus with Lana. I was alone, no one there to reprimand me for my volume or side-eye me for my catharsis. I was free to express myself, so I played the song on repeat, screaming each time.

Finding spaces in which complete emotional unraveling is not only allowed but modeled is paramount to any sort of emotional stability. Everyone needs to fall apart sometimes, letting yourself do so is how you stay sane. What often makes this difficult is finding the permission to fully let go.

Women especially are conditioned to feel like they must always exist in a carefully curated presentation of calmness and ease. We must not be too loud, too complicated, or–God forbid–too emotional.

There’s been a clear internet phenomenon of women finding solace in female characters who are allowed to go crazy: Pearl from Pearl, Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. Through these characters, women can safely explore emotional unraveling. When they cry, we cry. When they scream, we do too.

Women's pain is often dismissed, written off as either dramatic or trivial. That’s why Pearl and Amy are so cathartic. These characters either killed or successfully ruined the lives of those who hurt them. It’s not just their screaming that’s reliving, if that their feelings were finally validated. As people suffered the consequences of their wrath, they had to confront the understanding that these women are real.

And that might be the hardest part of this all. Being a woman and being made to feel like your feelings are not real or important. In that instance it becomes clear that the only thing worse than not being able to be in pain is having the pain you do experience be dismissed as disingenuous.

Most women are not killers. Most won’t fake their own death to avenge an ex. Most women will not push until they’re no longer overlooked, and we shouldn’t need them to. It should not be the case that going clinically insane is the only way you can express yourself and get taken seriously.

Falling apart–screaming, crying–is natural and healthy. We’ve all lived through winter. We’ve seen nature die, go cold and barren. The death and rebirth process is a vital part of survival.

But we’ve deprived 50% of the population from that cycle. We define “good” women as those who don’t get upset. They’re always agreeable. Always passive. All this does is create a world of women who are slowly bubbling over with unprocessed sadness and rage.

Let women get upset. And when they do, believe them.