Men Have Called Her Crazy

Tendler first engaged in self-harming behaviors when she was 14. Her friend Amanda, a junior when Tendler was a freshman, noticed a cut on Tendler’s wrist and encouraged her to stop. Amanda was intrigued by Tendler, as Tendler stood out in school. Tendler often wore clothes her mother made when she was young, appearing flamboyant like “a Rumours-era Stevie Nicks crossed with Fairuza Balk in The Craft” (26). Tendler’s mother almost attended fashion school in New York City, but her conservative father wouldn’t let her.

Tendler and Amanda remained close throughout Tendler’s high school years, and as her cutting grew in intensity, Tendler used the friendship bracelets they made together to hide her wrists. She doesn’t know where the idea for self-harm first emerged in her life, but from the age of seven she was a ballet dancer at a prestigious academy. When she became a teenager, she had to wrestle with the realization that she was not skilled enough to become a professional. Without dance, Tendler felt unmoored and found comfort in the pain of self-harm. It was easy to hide from her parents, as their marriage was unraveling throughout the entirety of Tendler’s childhood. When Tendler began exhibiting symptoms of depression, her mother took her to the doctor to be tested for food allergies, insisting that Tendler was not depressed. She was allergic to eggplant and peppers, but her depression did not improve with a change in her diet, which she found unsurprising.

In the treatment center, the overnight house manager wakes Tendler up every two hours. She finds it reminiscent of the film Girl, Interrupted, but regardless, she still sleeps somewhat well, kept warm by the layers of her sweatsuit and long underwear. In the morning, she takes her Zoloft and receives blood work. Tendler doesn’t faint during blood tests, and she walks back to Dalby House. The house manager remarks on the quickness of her pace, and Tendler tells her about how she used to go on walks with her mother, but her mother would never slow down for her, so she learned to walk fast. She’s not sure why she tells the house manager this.

Breakfast, delivered to all the houses due to COVID-19 precautions, arrives late, and the eggs are soggy and cold. Tendler forces herself to eat, and she and the other Dalby House residents watch a few minutes of a TED Talk before beginning group therapy. The women share how they physically and emotionally feel, and Tendler feels tired and numb. The others share openly about their experiences, but Tendler finds herself unready and unwilling to share. She listens, angry at herself for being unable to share and angry that she reacts so viscerally to hearing the other women speak about their experiences with substance abuse disorders, as she knows the impact of substance abuse disorders on loved ones.

After therapy, Tendler goes for a walk, missing her mother’s presence. She finds her car in the parking lot, and her eyes fill with tears as she feels she’s greeting an old friend. As she continues walking, she realizes that being without her phone and other distractions has made her thoughts form fully into sentences and paragraphs in her mind. She wonders if the notebook she brought will be enough to contain her thoughts and then worries she won’t even fill the notebook. She worries she’s a bad writer, the narration is a sign of mental illness that only her phone was keeping at bay, and that maybe she’s a genius who also hears voices. Her walk is no longer enjoyable.

She meets the rest of the Dalby House residents for lunch, which they share with the men of Oscar House. Tendler is again annoyed at having to spend time with the men, but Kristin, one of the residents, tells her they share all meals and group therapy—therapy that Tendler does not have to attend because she’s in a shorter program—with Oscar House. Kristin also reveals it’s her third time through the 30-day program, and Tendler feels ashamed for having goaded her into that revelation. She grabs her food without talking to any men, but one man compliments her jacket and hair. Before the pandemic, Tendler had pride in her style, but her mental health journey and isolation have made her gravitate toward shapeless sweatsuits. She’s upset that the man felt the need to talk about her appearance and hurries back to Dalby House, where she eats her lunch as she cries; the other women do not comment on her tears.

Later, Tendler attends afternoon yoga at the rec center. Her mother is a yoga teacher, but Tendler hates yoga. She pushes herself to do it anyway for the sake of exercise. In the class, only she and a man, Adam, attend. The instructor guides them through a simple yoga flow, and during Savasana, Tendler finds she doesn’t mind Adam’s presence near her. She’s grateful to be where she is, to have the opportunity to try to improve her mental health and avoid further harming herself. After the class ends, she and Adam notice a flock of wild turkeys appearing near the window. Tendler thinks they look beautiful. The teacher guides her and Adam through a meditative exercise, and Adam shares about his family and his desire to do better for them. Tendler does not share, and she struggles to return Adam’s fist bump, though she also wants to tell him, “good job.” They look for the turkeys again as they leave the rec center, but the animals have retreated into the woods.

At Dalby House, Tendler naps as she listens through the wall to Shawn, another woman, playing the violin. That night, a speaker named Betty arrives to talk to the women about her experience with addiction and Alcoholics Anonymous. Tendler listens intently as Betty describes her experience with her substance abuse disorder, how it progressed, and how she lost both her wife and her daughter in the same year. Tendler braces for what she thinks is the inevitable relapse following grief, but Betty surprises her by revealing she celebrated 25 years sober shortly after losing her daughter. Tendler feels inspired, and she shares her gratitude to Betty for being open with them. She tells her how inspirational it is to see someone go through such pain and still not turn to self-destructive tendencies.

In her freshman year of high school, Tendler met a boy named Ethan, a popular senior who randomly noticed her one day during her walk to English class. He put his arm around her and walked with her. The next day, he did the same, but he commented on her clothes, asking why she wore such baggy and eclectic things. Tendler told him that her clothes were her mother’s, and she liked them. That Saturday, Ethan arrived at Tendler’s house when her parents weren’t home. He let himself into the house, and then he asked Tendler to sit on the couch with him. He started making out with her, pinning her under him as he laid atop her. Tendler worried he would feel her maxi pad in her underwear as he pressed his crotch against hers. Tendler knew she could receive attention from older men, as she was once out shopping with her mother when an adult man approached her and asked her age. She told him that she was 13, and he told her how good she looked for her age. She told her mother what happened, and she told Tendler that she did the right thing by keeping the interaction short.

After 10 minutes of making out, Ethan got up and abruptly left. Next week at school, Ethan invited Tendler to hang out with him after his shift at Abercrombie. She asked her father to drive her to the mall under the guise of meeting with a group of friends after they finished work. When she arrived at Abercrombie, Ethan blew her off, saying he had other plans. She called her father to get her, and he apologized for her evening falling through. She told him that it didn’t matter, and they sang along to Simon and Garfunkel together. Her father disconnected from her life emotionally after Tendler hit puberty, so moments like these were rare. A few weeks later, Ethan again showed up unannounced at Tendler’s house, but she hid and watched him through the curtains until he rode his bike away into the woods.

Tendler is sleeping terribly at Dalby House. She keeps having the same nightmare that she often has, in which a man in a 1940s noir detective’s office tells her over and over that she’s “crazy,” though she keeps trying to deny it. When she wakes, she’s sweaty and anxious. She completes her morning routine of medication, vitals, and tea. Usually, she has to microwave her tea in a non-microwave safe cup, but finally, Dalby House receives a coffee pot to replace the one that broke weeks before Tendler’s arrival. Tendler rejoices in the new coffee pot with the other women and finally feels like she’s part of the community.

After breakfast, Tendler goes to her appointment with Dr. Philips. She arrives on time, part of her anxiety resulting from the frantic pace of her mornings growing up with a mother and brother who were perpetually late. Tendler sits on a settee by a fireplace, which reminds her of her furniture at home. She carefully curated all of her furniture pieces from various antique dealers or her grandparents’ house. She also uses lamps and sconces to light her house, so each space feels homey. She has many settees.

After some time waiting, Tendler greets Dr. Philips, who brings her upstairs to his office. She finds the chair much less comfortable than the settee, but she sits anyway. Dr. Philips administers several psychological evaluations, all of which Tendler is anxious to do well on. She has an impressive vocabulary, only not knowing the definition of one word, palliate, which Dr. Philips connects to the practice of palliative care. Tendler struggles a little with the math questions, as she hasn’t done real math since high school. Dr. Philips also gives her some paper tests to take back at Dalby. She returns to Dalby and completes the assessments.

Afterward, she goes to a Tai Chi class at the rec center, but no instructor ever arrives. She returns to Dalby for art therapy. The therapist instructs the Dalby women to scribble on a piece of paper with their non-dominant hands. When done, they must use lines to make the scribbles into a drawing. Tendler struggles to see anything out of scribbles until she sees the image of three snakes, which terrifies her as she has an intense phobia of snakes. She draws a pond with three snakes. When the therapist asks her about the significance of the number three, she answers that perhaps it has to do with astrology or the members of her family (her, her husband, and their dog).

After dinner, everyone receives their phone calls and emails. Tendler did not give the Dalby phone number to her mother, as she worried she would call for mundane things. When Tendler checks her email, she sees various emails from her friends updating her about the 1990s movies they’ve been watching, something they used to do with Tendler before she entered treatment. She also has many emails from her mother updating her about mundane issues with her house and Petunia’s behavior. When she sees the other girls happy to receive phone calls from their loved ones, she regrets not giving the phone number to anyone, as she wonders how this isolation impacts her. She looks again at her drawing from art therapy, and she thinks it’s not related to astrology or her family. It’s just what she could make out of a scribble of lines.