Call Me Crazy

There is a crazy woman in town, and she is sitting next to me on the couch at Starbucks as I write this. There is another empty couch, and by my count there are three empty and relatively comfy chairs and at least seven empty tables, and she has chosen to descend upon my sacred space. I don't want to hurt her feelings and get up, but I feel trapped, and I hate that.

Sometimes, I admit, I feel as if I have lost touch with reality, maybe gone a little bit kooky. But I would never join somebody else on a couch built for two in Starbucks, even if there was not an empty seat in the house. I'd rather stand. I'd even delay my caffeine fix and head out to find another coffee house with more appealing seating arrangements. Proof, I think, that I have not completely lost it, at least not yet. Phew.

I used to see her around here all the time -- at the health club, at restaurants, on the street. Always on the phone, always screaming at someone. Well, except when she was at the restaurant with her husband, son, and parents and she was chain-drinking wine and screaming at all of them. Who needs a phone when you can do it in person?

I was not surprised to hear that she is now divorced and living downtown in her parents' condo, having lost custody of her son. I didn't hear this directly from her, since I buried my head in my laptop the minute she sat down on MY couch and tried to make conversation. I heard it from someone else who had the dubious good fortune of being cornered by her on her recent return to the neighborhood.

What happens to people? I can only guess that when life started for her -- and by life I mean adult, married-with-children life -- she seemed normal, to the extent anybody can seem normal, whatever "normal" is. Yet here she is, my age, on temporary leave from her elderly parents' nest, flitting from couch to couch in Starbucks in the wee hours of the morning in search of someone who will listen to her. Will she end up on the street one day? Is that the natural progression of things?

The weird thing is she seems happy in her delusional world, the one in which she thinks everyone wants to talk to her, sit with her on the couch. Maybe it's liberating to just be crazy. Not crazy the way I am crazy, but totally-all-screws-loose-and-all-pistons-misfiring nuts! I think I might talk to her after all, get some pointers.