It’s just your average day as a waitress; putting on a pearly white smile ensuring that the customers will tip enough for you to pay your college tuition in time. To be honest sometimes it's just a drag. Pretending that everything's just peachy can become incredibly difficult when you work six days a week, nonstop. The other day I got yelled at for not entering in an order properly. Correction: it wasn’t yelling it was that very specific tone of voice that makes you want to crawl into a hole. I started sobbing. I’m talking Kim Kardashian level blubbering. Being the stubborn woman that I am, I refused to stop working. Salty tears were streaming down into the orange juices as I continued to serve on my tables. I made my way to polish the silverware and I didn’t even need water to polish, my tears were enough. Of course I am exaggerating, but I am not lying when I say I looked psychotic. I went to go take a breather outside where I sat in the “smoking chair,” the other waitresses red lipstick covered cigarettes engulfed me. Everyone kept asking what was wrong and I just said that I was tired. Which is partly true, I am tired. When I say that it's exhausting to be me I’m not lying because, honey this brain never shuts the hell up. I’m not saying that in a bad way, even if it comes off like that. I love my brain. I love that it allows me to go in so many directions and have so many different interests. But sometimes my brain gets me in trouble. It’s probably not considered “normal” to have a full blown psychotic episode over a little mistake like entering in an order wrong. But people like me we take things to another level, and when we are stressed we don’t let people know because god forbid we burden anyone else. So this is what went through my head when I made this minute mistake:

“You can’t even enter in a check properly, how are you going to graduate college???

Holy shit...how are you going to pay for college with a job as a waitress in a diner??

Oh my god...do people think I’m stupid?”

etc...

So there ya go I’m nuts and I’m broke, but I love it. I love it all so much. Crazy people are the best kind of people. Those I love the most are off their rockers. But these kind of people always keep you on your toes. I will always remember a quote from Ernest Hemingway: “ I mistrust all frank and simple people.” These kind of people are the worst. Always trying to get people like me in line. I find that there is always this need to hide the crazy. I’m not going to lie to you it's kind of fun to be slightly, but not completely off you shits. It makes you do everything with a sense of urgency and purpose. I don’t really know how to explain it to you to be honest. To have your mind race and bounce is a thrilling feeling, like you’re invincible.

When you can accept that everyone has a little crazy living within them then I promise that your world will broaden. You become less susceptible to judgement. And for those who do judge you just know that deep down misery lives within them. Everyone has judgements, thats natural. How you handle and internalize these judgements is what makes the difference.

Do you boo, those who can’t handle it will leave either suddenly or gradually. It will sting like no other when you realize that the people who you were once closest to now want nothing to do with you. You were simply too much for them. This doesn’t make them bad people. It just means that these friendships weren’t meant to be.

Let me tell you a story. It’ll be quick I promise. It was freshman year of college and I was not the good kind of crazy; I was why isn’t this girl medicated kind of crazy. I had a group of a close friends who I spent every minute with, I’ll be honest I loved it. I’m an only child so it was great to be around people who weren’t my parents. We had those cliche moments in the car, with the music blasting as you sing along sounding like absolute shit. It was nice. It was real...I think. The thing is, I was crumbling, not slowly but rapidly. They were there for me and I will be eternally grateful for that. I was accompanied to the hospital when I had my breakdowns, notice the plural on that one. But the thing is, they only knew the broken Olivia and they liked her. Then I started getting better, a lot better. I was becoming a different person. I didn’t need anyone to come to my room at 1am to console me anymore. I wasn’t “fixed” by any means but I wasn’t the same person. I don’t think they really knew what to do, so they left. I don’t blame them, I probably would have left me too. Then there came the day when we wouldn’t say hi in the hallway, it was like our friendship never happened. It was interesting. I think that people in general can easily invest themselves into other people's pain, it diverts their attention away from their own problems. Then the pain goes away and they are forced to look at themselves, they don’t like what they see.

But when this group of friends ditched a whole new other group of people came instantly. With them I felt loved, I felt safe, I felt happy. My friends now mean the world to me, I wish them only the absolutely fabulous things in life.

So this is my advice to you my friends: be only yourself, even if that is batshit. Life unfolds in a weird way, the best things will come to you when you least expect it.