Men Have Called Her Crazy

The house manager wakes up Tendler during one of the bed checks because she thinks she isn’t breathing. Tendler cannot get back to sleep, as she misses the comforts of her home. She goes to the kitchen for tea and greets Shawn, who’s experiencing neck pain. Shawn hopes to see the turkeys, and Tendler tells her about her spotting the turkeys during yoga. A male nurse arrives to check on Tendler’s tuberculosis test. She doesn’t have tuberculosis. Tendler thinks back on the idealized aesthetics of tuberculosis, or consumption, in the 19th century. A woman with consumption was thin, with milk-white skin and blood-red lips. However, consumption was seen as a moral failing, so as the women were celebrated for their ethereal beauty, they were denigrated for their disease.

Tendler meets with her social worker, Beth. Tendler feels like her life is a series of stops and starts, full of failures to finish things. She never became a professional dancer; she failed her board exam after cosmetology school, she started art school but dropped out after her depression became intense, she cut hair illegally during the pandemic but stopped because she became bored, and she worked as a makeup artist but started to hate it. Her financial situation has always been precarious, and she has survived by relying on her romantic partners, which embarrasses her to admit. In her mid-twenties, she finished her bachelor’s degree, which allowed her to apply to graduate school. She thinks she’s good at graduate school, so to not finish would devastate her. She cries while telling Beth this, who comforts her and tells her that she’s conscientious and dedicated, which will allow her to succeed and finish graduate school.

Tendler then meets with a chaplain to discuss her emotional and spiritual well-being. The chaplain asks her about her religious upbringing, as Tendler shares about her Jewish roots, though she does not presently identify as religious. Her Jewish identity is more closely related to Jewish culture. The chaplain asks her when there was a time she felt close to spirituality. Tendler tells her about losing her dance career, which the chaplain identifies as her first real loss. Tendler says it was her second loss.

As a child, her older brother was a somewhat successful commercial actor. Tendler wanted to pursue acting, too. She dreamt of being on Broadway and even was in the final round of callbacks for a show. However, her mother decided she no longer wanted her life to revolve around her children and did not want to drive Tendler the hour and a half to Manhattan for rehearsals and performances. She dropped Tendler off at school one day and told her that if she called the school to tell Tendler to take the bus home, she wouldn’t drive her to the callback audition. Tendler was anxious the entire day, and then the school told her to take the bus home. The chaplain acknowledges that this loss, followed by the loss of dance, are two big heartbreaks for a young person.

At dinner, it is Kristin’s last night before she transitions to a sober living facility. At Dalby House, the women do a rock ceremony, in which the departing person chooses a rock with a word on it, and then the group takes turns holding the rock and giving the person words of advice or wisdom. Tendler does not have anything too personal to say, given she’s only known Kristin for a few days, but she wishes her luck.

In Tendler’s junior year, she met a 23-year-old man named Brian at a punk show in Poughkeepsie. Brian was romantically interested in her, so she lied to her parents about his age, saying he was 19. Her parents had separated. Her mother thought her father had an affair, while her father claimed his new relationship did not begin until after the divorce. Tendler, however, believes that her mother’s aggression and anger pushed her father away, so he did not feel like an affair took place since the relationship was over long before the divorce. After the divorce, her mother’s rage became more concentrated and focused on Tendler, as she was the only one left in the house. She became angry at Tendler for all kinds of things, especially wanting to see her father. She also began exhibiting symptoms of depression, and Tendler worried if she came home, she’d find her mother had died by suicide.

As Tendler’s relationship with Brian continued, she snuck off to see Lord of the Rings with him. On his way to pick her up, Brian witnessed a fatal car accident. Tendler was reminded of a fatal accident her family had witnessed one Christmas a few years prior, an experience that traumatized her. She asked if Brian wanted to reschedule the date, but he said he was fine. His lack of empathy startled Tendler. At the movie, she fell asleep twice and bled through her tampon, as the film was longer than she anticipated. After the movie, Brian fingered Tendler in the car, not allowing her to warn him about her tampon, which he painfully pushed further into her. A police officer arrived and asked what they were doing, and Brian quickly lied that he was back from college and visiting his girlfriend. The speed of his lie alarmed Tendler. He dropped her off at home, and though she messaged him on AOL instant messenger, she never heard from him again.

The Dalby House women practice horticultural therapy, working with Cuban oregano as a therapist comes to the house with gardening supplies. Tendler enjoys it, and the fertilizer she uses on her plant reminds her of caster sugar, a sugar she used when she made macarons during the pandemic. The first time she made them, they came out perfectly. However, she could never replicate the perfection. Tendler surveys the other women’s plants and decides hers is the most perfect one.

Tendler has another appointment with Dr. Samuels. Dr. Samuels asks her about the last year of her life, and Tendler answers him. Afterward, he tells her that she’s experienced a great amount of strain trauma. Shock trauma is what most people associate with trauma, which occurs after incidents like war and causes flashbacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more. Strain trauma, on the other hand, happens when a person is in an environment for long periods that causes the person to be in a consistent state of anxious arousal. Tendler’s childhood home led to strain trauma, as her mother was often volatile, and her father did little to protect Tendler. Tendler initially feels defensive about her mother, as in some ways, she was a good mother who supported her creativity and read her the entirety of the Anne of Green Gables series aloud over three years.

However, Dr. Samuels helps guide her toward a more nuanced understanding of her mother. Her mother was good, but she also created a volatile environment for Tendler, participating in the cycle of abuse given that Tendler’s mother had a difficult and abusive childhood. Even though Tendler and her mother’s relationship is better now, Dr. Samuels explains that the past continues to affect her as an adult. Tendler thinks that Dr. Samuels has a two-dimensional view of her mother, as he only knows the information about her that comes from Tendler, much of which involves her mother screaming at her. Tendler remembers how she once screamed at her mother to show her how it felt when she was 17. Her mother then did not shout at her again until she was 21.

Tendler remembers when her mother took a trip to India to learn more about yoga for six weeks. Her mother sent Tendler beautiful emails throughout her trip, full of understanding and empathy about India. Tendler printed the emails, along with photos from the trip, into a book for her mother. She understands what Dr. Samuels is telling her. Her mother loves her dearly, but she also created a traumatic environment for Tendler.

Later, during TV time at Dalby, Dr. Philips arrives to tell Tendler about the results of her assessments. He tells Tendler that she is very organized and capable of rich, abstract thought, though she has average memory capabilities and struggles with math. However, Dr. Philips thinks that Tendler’s struggle with math stems from her anxiety, and if she could push past her anxiety, it’s likely she’d be able to solve the problems. She exhibits strong neuroticism, meaning she’s more easily prone to negative thoughts and feelings. When she thinks she’ll fail at something, she becomes so anxious she shuts down entirely. Dr. Philips also tells her that she’s an anti-extrovert and exhibits severe introversion, leading to her desire to isolate herself from others. Dr. Philips wraps up by telling Tendler that the Rorschach test revealed that she has intense childhood trauma, she carries a heavy weight within her that not everyone can see, and he has empathy for her.

One night, after Amanda and Tendler left a punk show, their car was broken into. With smashed windows, they couldn’t drive the car home. Amanda asked a bandmate from the show named Todd to help them wrap the windows with plastic wrap. He helped them and gave them the number of his brother, David, who was playing a show that Amanda and Tendler were going to later. They drove home with the windows wrapped, though it’s illegal to do so, and a cop pulled them over but let them go because he heard about the break-in.

Later, Amanda and Tendler attended David’s show, and not long after, David joined Todd’s band. David invited Amanda and Tendler to Philadelphia to see a show, giving Tendler a press pass to photograph the band. Tendler met Sam, another member of the band. Later, David texted Tendler and told her that Sam asked for her number, even though Sam was 28 and Tendler was only 17. Tendler asked him to give her number to Sam, and David hesitantly did. Five months later, Sam invited Tendler to LA. Tendler lied to her parents, telling them that she was going to visit her brother in San Francisco. Instead, in San Francisco, she took a second flight to LA to see Sam. Sam picked her up from the airport, and she stayed with him, culminating in them having sex. Tendler did not tell Sam she was a virgin until afterward, though he seemed more happy than upset. However, he told her to keep their intimacy a secret because Tendler is under the California age of consent, which is 18.

When Tendler went home, she joked about taking Sam to prom. However, she instead asked David to go with her. David refused, upset that Tendler was with someone so much older. Tendler attended prom with Amanda. During her senior year, Tendler was accepted to a five-year dual enrollment at Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College in Manhattan. However, she asked her parents if she could take a gap year to attend cosmetology school in LA, telling them that she found a free place to live with a friend. They agreed, and she moved in with Sam.