This has been an interesting discussion to follow (still reading it) because, you know, my mom's kind of psycho. One of the ways in which she is irrational is how she is, I guess, overprotective.

By way of comparison, my mother didn't give the first fuck so long as I hadn't committed suicide, wasn't doing something she could confuse for suicidal ideation, or doing something that she could twist around inside her head into suicidal behavior.

Her brother sucked a tailpipe his Freshman year at Harvard, making her the oldest at 14. Her parents, who hated each other a lot, began a 40-year run of blaming each other for his death. His suicide, combined with her parents' ejection from Harvard and Radcliffe for "sexual indiscretion", required her to go to Swarthmore instead of Harvard. And thus, "suicide" became "the root of the world falling apart." Oddly enough, my sister didn't have to deal with any of it - she could pretend to overdose on Tylenol and it was big laughs. Me? Fall asleep in my locked room and not hear a gentle knock? time to break the door down.

Balance that out with the fact that I could make Friday night calls that went like "Hi, I'm in Dallas, back by Sunday night" and that my sister was released into my custody three times during High School.

Here's the point - there's "normal crazy" and there's "crazy crazy." I think when one kid gets it vastly more than another, it's "crazy crazy." It's empowering, if I may be so bold, to wrap your head around someone else's crazy and recognize that irrationality is not something that needs to be explained or understood - it just is.