Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir

by Anna Marie Tendler

I tell him about more than one sexual encounter with older men when I was underage, but they were consensual. No matter how weird I feel about them now, they were, at the time, consensual.

“I was experiencing very bad anxiety, exacerbated by the pandemic. So at first I wasn’t eating because I was so anxious, I didn’t have an appetite. Then it turned into a competitive game with my scale. A how-low-can-I-go situation, because I wanted to feel in control of something.”

In the hospital, what you watch has to be mutually agreed upon by everyone in the room. The policy is not to watch anything that might be triggering or otherwise upsetting to any of our fellow patients. There are certain things we are not supposed to watch without consent from everyone, like the news, and other things that we are flat-out not allowed to watch, like HBO’s Euphoria. Disgraced lawyers played by known weirdo middle-aged actors, yes; teens with sparkly eyeliner who take Molly, no.

I have never felt truly good at any of the things I started, so I abandon them when the weight of mediocrity—or worse, inability—becomes too overwhelming.

“Shock trauma is the type of trauma most people are familiar with. It’s the sort of trauma that occurs when someone is in war combat. It causes flashbacks, disturbing dreams, violent outbursts, the behavior we commonly associate with severe PTSD. Strain trauma, on the other hand, happens over long periods of time, when a person is in an environment that consistently puts them in a state of anxious arousal.”

“Take, for example, your home life growing up. Your mother was emotionally volatile. She had rage issues, and it seems she had trouble attuning to your needs because they were so different from her own. You didn’t know what might set her off or what might get you in trouble. You couldn’t trust that emotionally you would get what you needed when you needed it. Additionally, it doesn’t seem like your dad did much to protect you from her anger.”

We had bad fights sometimes, yet I never once felt any disrespect or lack of awareness for my emotions, or inclination that he did not deeply care for me. He was the sort of man who was on a constant journey toward betterment. He questioned himself and his thoughts and his behaviors. He always strived to be the best version of himself for the people he loved. In the years since then, I have realized these are very rare qualities for men.

This feeling—that I have fucked up, that I have disappointed someone, that I might be on the verge of getting screamed at—is the one most likely to send me into a state of panic,

My early twenties brought with them my first interaction with truly rich men. I quickly realized these were perhaps the worst sect of people. Not only did they believe their wealth and wealth-adjacent power made them better, smarter, and more interesting than those with less, they also moved through life with unassailability. They accepted without question the reality of an existence where every inconvenience could be paid to go away.

David and I read the same books—The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Henry and June, The Hotel New Hampshire—and would discuss them, dissecting the things we loved or loathed, and how they made us feel.

Here is the thing about men lying to women while telling them they are crazy or overreacting. The lying, the underplaying on their side, makes us doubt our intuition and intelligence, so eventually when suspicions are confirmed, when we find out we have been correct all along, we do go batshit fucking crazy. And it is warranted.

I don’t remember if walking the property at dark or socializing with the men for nighttime smoke breaks has been explicitly forbidden, but I can’t imagine it’s encouraged. An entire childhood of being yelled at for minor offenses—accidentally spilling food on a nice sweater, hitting my head in a pool because I wasn’t using my arms in a backstroke—have shaped me into a person who doesn’t take risks when it comes to following rules. I’m not about to change that now. No momentary burst of fun is worth the shame of getting in trouble.

I didn’t realize having children was a choice until I was in my early twenties. It seemed like something everyone had to do at a certain point, a natural progression of life stages. No particular moment catalyzed the choice. I simply remember thinking one day, Oh wait, I don’t have to be a mom. From that day forward I never really wanted to be one.

My obsession with equality in relationships restricts me from balancing the weight of what men put into child-rearing versus what women do. I wonder if it can ever be equal. I feel instinctually it can’t, while also recognizing that instinct might be wrong.

They’re also shaped by the particular ways I want my life and my time to be my own. I’ve never woken up at eight a.m. on a Saturday and thought, God, I’d love to take a kid to soccer practice right now.