Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules
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5. I believe bugs have a vendetta against me. If there is a mosquito floating around a large group, it will only bite me. And it will bite me thirty times. Every bee instinctively senses my fear and chases me indoors. On separate occasions, a fly, a ladybug, and a moth have kamikaze’d into my open mouth.
6. I always cry during the “Something There” musical montage in Beauty and the Beast. The Beast doesn’t know how to use a goddamn spoon, so he just shoves his face into the bowl of whatever mystery porridge they were eating, and then everyone makes him feel really uncomfortable about it. Damn. I teared up just typing that. In fact, watching anyone eat while hungry generally makes me want to burst into tears. There’s just something both adorable and pitiable about really shoveling it in. Side note, Belle has some pretty intense Stockholm syndrome, no?
7. I once had very real feelings for the fictional video-game character Solid Snake. And Buffy’s Angel. And Seto Kaiba. And Spike Spiegel. And Vegeta. I’m talking intense and confusing feelings of romantic devotion. I was sure that behind the dark, brooding angst, curmudgeon demeanor, and tortured pasts these gravelly voiced antiheroes were capable of at least an ounce of love and…oh crap. My marriage suddenly makes complete sense.
8. I burn all my food. On purpose. Burgers. Bacon. Cheese. Hell, I even burn my eggs. Every douchebag who thinks they’re being incredibly original by screaming “blasphemy” from their ivory douche tower when I order my steak well done needs to take it down a few notches. Rare meat makes me feel like I’m chomping into a human forearm.
9. I am incapable of eating alone at a restaurant. I don’t understand how anyone can do that without crying into their beet salad. They are clearly stronger people than I am. There is no amount of pretending to be busy on my phone that could save me in that situation. And forget going to a movie alone. If I ever tried to purchase a ticket to a movie all by my lonesome, I’m sure I would spontaneously combust into flames.
10. I fear escalators. I eagerly await the day I can step onto an escalator without quietly whispering to myself, “Careful…careful.”
11. I keep cereal boxes in the refrigerator. I keep bags of chips in there too. I’m not a monster. I grew up in such shitty apartment buildings, if any opened bag or box of food was left out overnight, it would undoubtedly be pillaged by a swarm of cockroaches. And when you’re six, it is very easy to mistake a floating roach for a raisin. Understandably, I was scarred for life.
12. I peed the bed when I was eight. The pee traveled so far while I slept it actually touched the nape of my neck. When I woke up, I simply tiptoed into the bathroom, washed my clothes in the sink, put the wrung-out-but-still-soaking-wet clothes onto my body, and crawled back into bed. I’d like to take this moment to apologize to my sister for letting her sleep in a puddle of my urine, as well as blaming it on her in the morning.
When Grandpa got sick, Dad had traveled back to Puerto Rico to help care for him. He was concerned about leaving Ma alone in New Jersey for a few weeks, but I had promised I would do my best to help out. Unfortunately, a short time later I received a call from him letting me know Grandpa had passed. Dad, never one to let his guard down, was uncharacteristically emotional. I had never heard my father’s voice crack with grief. It was unsettling. I didn’t know how I could help, but I offered it anyway.
“Actually, if you could break the news to your mom, I’d really appreciate it. I’ve got a lot of other things to worry about,” he asked while fighting tears.
“Of course. I can do that.”
Coffee makes everything better. So I had stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts a block from home before seeing Ma. The employees knew all the Mendez clan by name, since Dad had befriended them upon moving into the neighborhood. They were kind enough to let him open a tab of sorts to get coffee and baked goods on credit and never made him feel uncomfortable or rushed into paying it back. Dad had to swallow his pride while asking a lot of different owners of local bodegas for credit over the years, and so it was refreshing there was one store in town that treated him with respect, kindness, and generosity.
I bought my mother a blueberry muffin and a French vanilla coffee and made my way to her front door. I had expected her to take the news badly, since Grandpa had opened his home to us and because she empathized with Dad’s loss. What I did not expect was for her to wail like a dying animal and hit the floor. The sounds that came out of her were not from this world. She lay shaking facedown on the floor, and using all my strength, I could not budge her from that spot.
Yes, I expected her to be sad. We all were. But she did not have a close relationship with her husband’s dad. I tried to rationalize her behavior by telling myself that everyone grieves in different ways, but something still felt dangerously off.
A week later, a psychiatric hospital found Erica’s phone number in Ma’s belongings and let her know our mother was involuntarily admitted. Having to deal with the stress of being home alone while my father was still in Puerto Rico, Janet took an almost deadly combination of pills to try to ease her mind. Realizing she was in trouble, she called 911 and reported her accidental overdose. But the hospital considered the overdose a suicide attempt. Her bizarre and aggressive behavior while being treated led them to believe she had suffered a complete mental breakdown and they admitted her against her will to their psychiatric unit.
After a month, Ma not only came home with dozens of crayon drawings she made during therapy sessions and a story about a nurse stealing her Twizzlers (which if true, means that nurse deserves to be swiftly kicked in the crotch), but also a much-needed diagnosis. Janet had bipolar disorder. And as discovered through weekly therapy, she had been suffering from its effects for most of her life.
Without any of us knowing, she had recently visited a doctor who misdiagnosed her with depression. Antidepressants can have adverse effects on someone with bipolar disorder, and the doctors at the hospital blamed this for her suicide attempt.
I thought it was sadly ironic how my mother and I had both secretly sought out treatment at almost the exact same time. We had both initially been diagnosed with depression. Now that I learned she was misdiagnosed, I wondered if it was possible I had been as well. But her bipolar disorder seemed so severe, so consuming, I brushed the thought off. There was no way I was as sick as the woman I was now helping fill out disability paperwork.
Ma had to enter a government-funded disability program to be able to afford proper medication. Because of her disability status, Ma was no longer considered capable of paying the student loan she had taken out to help send me to NYU.
I could no longer afford to go to school. And honestly, my head was not in the right space to continue anyway. I couldn’t focus on anything. I started missing assignments and skipping whole classes. And even though at the end of the semester I had straight As, my series of unfortunate events led to my leaving NYU.
I was heartbroken. I felt like a failure. All I had wanted was to escape the grip of my small town and create my own future for myself, and yet I let circumstances take me down. In the months that followed, I considered every wrong move I had made, playing out countless possible scenarios that could have ended things differently for me. After flying so close to the sun, I was now a cashier at Pathmark Supermarket and living with my parents. The almost mighty had fallen very, very far.
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When you have a job that requires you to serve other people, many parts of that job will, unequivocally, suck a top hat full of dicks. Whether you are a janitor at a day care, a cashier at a supermarket, a secretary, a waiter, or a valet driver—the best part of someone’s day is going to be shitting atop you. So try and wear a hat, a raincoat, and asshole repellent.
You can tell a lot about individuals by how they treat the people they believe are beneath them—people who cannot help them get promoted, who cannot report their actions to human resources, who don’t have their level of education or a fraction of their bank account. It is scary to realize what someone is capable of whe
n no one is watching. When no one will hold them accountable for their actions. Basically, it’s the exact same attitude people have when using Twitter, but in real life.
When you have a job on the lowest tier, when you are meant to be subservient and at the beck and call of someone else, most people will not care about how you are being treated. No one will notice. Working in the service industry means, more often than not, people will look right through you. Sure, you may feel indignant when your barista forgets to say “thank you” and spells your name wrong on a paper cup, but that is only thirty seconds of your day. Consider how many assholes this barista has had to deal with in the last five hours. How many people have not returned his “thank you”? How many douchebags have spoken to him rudely or questioned his intelligence? “Did you hear me say 2 percent milk? That milk must be 2 percent. If it’s not 2 percent, I will drop dead right here on your counter and there’s a long line behind me, buddy.” It’s human nature to want to feel in control. But many people never get that satisfaction. And so when they are in the presence of those they regard as mere commoners who ring up their coffee order or bag their groceries, they will excise their control to make them feel better about their shitty existence.
My father is literally the only person I have ever known who actively tries to engage any and all humans who surround him. I have watched him ask stock boys how their day is going and giggled at how truly shocked and unaccustomed they were to having someone acknowledge their presence. Everyone is equal in his eyes. Because as he once eloquently explained, “Life is like a wheel. Some days you’re on top and some days you’re on the bottom. What’s the fucking difference?” And that’s the mentality I have tried to employ throughout my life and career—friends, strangers, interns, lighting crew, writers, bosses, what’s the fucking difference?
It was an attitude I wish more people had when I was a janitor, a cashier, and eventually a secretary. The smallest act of someone smiling at me, saying “thank you,” or even just making eye contact helped remind me I was an actual human being and not a robot designed to nonjudgmentally swipe customers’ lambskin condoms and smile while being yelled at for expired coupons.
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I tried to make the most of being a cashier. Even though I was making minimum wage, I tried to help pay the rent, and I often spent my meager checks bringing home discounted food from Pathmark.
I couldn’t afford to go to therapy anymore, and I was too afraid to try the antidepressants hidden in my underwear drawer, so I spent some time researching homeopathic methods to overcoming depression. I tried everything from St. John’s wort, to B12 pills, to fish oil. And maybe those are all kooky placebos, but it felt good to try to take control. Putting the effort in and being proactive was in itself therapeutic. I would feel like I was onto something when my panic attacks and anxiety would eventually subside for long periods of time, but the heightened nerves were only replaced by inexplicably deadened ones. It seemed my brain’s only options were to run sprints or to shut down completely. I wasn’t sure which was better.
The whole world seemed to be drenched in gray, like a foggy mist hung in the air, and everything had a little less life. Nothing pushed me out of bed in the morning. Instead I felt as if my body were eight hundred pounds and I had to peel myself off the sheets. Things I once found excitement and entertainment in barely sparked my interest. My sketchbooks collected dust, while my gaming consoles were only used to get me through the repetitive sleepless nights. I lost count of how many times I got off a shift at 6 p.m., went home to eat the Pathmark find of a 99-cent Banquet microwave dinner, and just played Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater until my next shift at 10 a.m. Even food lost its taste, as if every meal was just made out of dry, plain oatmeal.
I wanted to worry about these changes, but I didn’t have the energy. It was as if my brain knew something was wrong but my heart was just too numb to give a shit. The only solace that gave me was I no longer felt sad about leaving school. I no longer cried about it every night. I just felt…nothing.
—
But I did learn some very valuable life lessons while bagging groceries. Because a grocery store is basically just a microcosm of human behavior.
If you carelessly knock over items on a shelf, you probably have a very messy home. If you don’t notice you have dropped unwrapped tomatoes on the floor, you probably take your wealth and ability to fill a fridge with food for granted. If you enter a “10 Items or Less” express checkout lane with a fully stocked cart, you are probably inconsiderate and selfishly put your own needs before others’. And if you are the type of person who doesn’t return your shopping cart to the proper place, but instead leave it in the middle of a parking lot for a teenager to clean up after you, you probably have a mother who cries every night because she gave birth to a monster.
The hardest part about working around food in a low-income neighborhood was witnessing how hard it can be for some people to feed their families. I was unlucky enough to ring up several people whose credit cards got denied or “Family First” food stamp cards hit their limit. Watching someone burn with embarrassment as they have to leave bags of groceries behind, and then having to restock dinosaur-shaped nuggets that were clearly meant to feed a little kid, really ate away at me.
I remembered walking the aisles of ShopRite when I was about five years old, holding my mother’s hand. Erica stayed back, sleeping in the car with Dad, because she had a nasty cold. We walked through the store briskly and were on our way out without having made a purchase, when a security guard grabbed my mother’s arm. He pulled her hand out of her coat pocket to reveal a stolen bottle of children’s Tylenol. I guess the security guard had seen her swipe something but didn’t realize what it was. “I’m sorry. My baby is sick in the car,” she pleaded with him. He was clearly stricken with a crisis of conscience. “You shouldn’t shop here again,” he said as he replaced the bottle into her pocket and hurried her out the door. I never forgot that small act of illegal kindness.
Was it wrong to give something away, just because it wasn’t yours? Would anyone truly get hurt by stealing from a rich corporation to give to the poor? As a fully formed adult I can sit here and tell you that breaking the law in any way is a deeply stupid move that can have disastrous consequences. But as an eighteen-year-old with nothing to lose (note to self: research statute of limitations) I gave literally zero fucks about what was right or wrong.
Young mothers would approach my register and hesitantly place their baby formula and cereals on the belt. “Can you let me know when it gets close to fifty dollars? I don’t have more than that left on my card,” they would say, referring to their limited, government-funded EBT card. It is basically a debit card that holds someone’s food stamp allowance. The items you can purchase with it are restricted to essentials like dairy, vegetables, and bread, and it cannot be used to purchase nonfood items like soap, vitamins, medicine, or even hot foods from the supermarket food bar. These are considered “luxury items” not “necessities.” According to the government, diapers are considered a luxury and thus cannot be bought using food stamps.
I would watch as these ladies accidentally had baby wipes, diapers, or children’s Tylenol in their cart and a thousand different emotions would flood through me. And so I did what I thought was right.
Each register had a camera fixed on it from above to make sure no one stole money out of the cash till. I would begin the transaction, swiping milk and other approved items, and then I would pause the computer on my register. I would go through the motions of scanning products, but the frozen register wouldn’t ring up an item or seven. With a few presses of a button, the register would turn back on, their total would miraculously come to thirty dollars, and the young women would breathe a sigh of relief. And that made me feel…something. In my new world of deadening monotony, having a rush of good intentions and a feeling of pride and accomplishment—like I had actually done something useful with my day—became a source of addiction.
When I was awarded a name badge upgrade for my “excellent service,” I felt a little guilty. My comment cards, and apparent exceptional grocery-bagging skills, had earned me a faux gold name tag with the phrase 100% Performance emblazoned underneath my name. Sure, I had earned the “award” by breaking the rules, but as a depressed college dropout, I ravenously devoured the crumbs of affirmation.
Admittedly, my “good deeds” began to get a little out of hand. A sweet elderly couple came into the store once a week, and my heart exploded each time they gingerly inched their walking frames up to a register and pulled out a tiny change purse and a wad of expired coupons. As I watched a fellow cashier tell them their coupon for prepackaged cheese slices was no longer usable, I swallowed a knot in my throat when they walked away empty-handed, because they simply couldn’t afford it without the discount. When they came into my line the next week, they again had expired coupons.
I couldn’t bear to deny them a simple necessity—a small half gallon of milk. And so I input a code to override the expired coupon message on my register’s screen and swiped the coupon’s bar code as if it were not a year old. The next week, the precious couple was back in my line again. As I tricked the register into accepting their expired coupons, I noticed they had two gallons of water on the shelf underneath their cart. It was hard to spot with the conveyor belt between us, and I could tell that was by design. Since they couldn’t afford to buy cheese two weeks before, I assumed they were desperate enough to steal the cheap gallons. I felt so awful for them and gladly looked the other way as they pushed the cart hiding two stolen jugs of water out of the store.