The world tilts, and I let it. Let the wind unravel me, let the rain soak my bones. They say I’m losing it, but maybe that’s the point—maybe sanity was the lie, the neat little box where nothing ever moves.
Somewhere between the chaos and the quiet, I remember the first time I felt the sky crack open inside me. A morning where the coffee spilled, the car wouldn’t start, the bills stacked like tombstones, and I laughed—laughed until my ribs ached, because what else was there to do? I had spent years trying to control the storm, not realizing I was meant to dance in it.
There is a kind of madness in surrender. In realizing that certainty is a myth, and stability is just a pause between hurricanes. Growth is not gentle; it is wild, unhinged. It is the cracking of seed shells, the shattering of cocoons. It is waking up one day and realizing the things that broke you were the things that saved you.
So I let the world spin. I do not brace for impact—I throw my arms wide. I lean into the mess, the noise, the uncertainty. I become the storm, and in the frenzy of it, I find something startling, something electric.
I am alive.
And for the first time, I am not afraid of it.
-Christine Armstrong
Shaping the Crazy 