In this one the madwoman locks herself up: Anna Marie Tendler is searching for her purpose (and I can relate)

I started reading Anna Marie Tendler’s memoir Men Have Called Her Crazy expecting to find a navel-gazing sob story, focusing too much on the men in her life and how they have wronged her.

I was wrong.

Men Have Called Her Crazy is a feminist take on the hysterical woman, an often-represented concept in pop culture and the literary canon. The woman, often claimed to be crazy by men, gets this label from the most trivial reasons, such as showing the slightest hint of emotion, particularly anger. By using this statement in the title of her memoir, Tendler claims ownership of her own craziness. 

We’ve seen the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, and witnessed the Girl, Interrupted, both locked up and stashed away to protect others from their crazy against their own will. This is the crazy woman with no power, autonomy or authority in her own life. But Tendler is a different kind of crazy woman. No one locks her in the attic or forcibly commits her to a psychiatric hospital – she drives herself there, and walks through the door of her own free will.

From the first page, this book echoes Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted. The memoir begins with Tendler describing her entry into a week-long psychiatric evaluation on the recommendation of her therapist, detailing how her belongings are taken away from her and inspected. Immediately, I am reminded of Kayser’s portrayal of her own entrance into a psychiatric hospital. While the two women have vastly different experiences in entering a psychiatric facility: the latter agreeing to her sentence kicking and screaming while the former goes calmly at her own behest, there is a striking similarity in tone. 

I’ve been following Anna Marie Tendler for years, and proudly “took her side” in the whole John Mulaney divorce spectacle. I knew this book would be coming out the moment she announced it on her Instagram (which I too have been following for years).

Yet, I wasn’t moved to actually read the book until I listened to Celebrity Memoir Book Cub’s podcast episode on it. And, as much as I love CMBC and enjoy their takes on various celebrity memoirs, I’m not sure I agree with this one. And of course, listening to their podcast before reading the material myself affected my perspective going into this book. In other words: your girl was biased. I was ready to go into this book rolling my eyes at her so-called problems.

Again, I was wrong.

I think CMBC are unnecessarily harsh on Anna Marie Tendler. They talk a lot about how she puts too much focus on the men that have been present throughout her life, and while I agree to an extent, I also believe that the experiences we have shape us and stay with us for a very long time.

I will agree that maybe it was too soon for this memoir to be written. Maybe some time, some extra space between having lived through the events of entering a psychiatric hospital and presenting them in this memoir would have been good. Possibly, Tendler was too close to the actual events to lay them out in a memoir. 

At the same time, maybe doing it in this way fulfilled the purpose Tendler intended the memoir to do. Maybe it was part of the healing journey.

Tendler’s memoir could have at times been mistaken for my own diary.

I started making notes for this essay when I was roughly halfway through the memoir. While reading, I was constantly underlining passages and paragraphs, and reading without a pen in my hand felt impossible. At the time, I made this observation in my Notes app:

“While I will finish reading the memoir before completing this essay, at this moment I have to say: somehow, by sharing her experiences in mental health struggles, Anna Marie Tendler has punctured something deep within me. I see much of myself in what she is writing. And as heartbreaking as it is, this book has given me a sense of comfort. I am not alone in feeling this way.”

How can someone who is a complete stranger to me beautifully lay out precisely how I feel and have felt at many times in my life regarding loneliness, my own capabilities (or lack thereof), and fear of failure and mediocrity?

At times, sentences shook me to my core because they took me so deeply by surprise: Tendler’s memoir could at times have been mistaken for my own diary.

As Tendler, I too begin and then promptly abandon different projects. Maybe this stems from my gifted child syndrome (I swear, if you too were a gifted child, can we start a support group or something?). Or maybe I just lack follow-through.

There is a yearning in Tendler that I deeply relate to. She’s passionately searching for her purpose in life, as am I. When she details her explorations into different fields, roles, and personas to find purpose; that one thing that will ignite the spark, is something that I as a very lost 20-something can relate to. I too am fervently searching for my purpose.

Anna, let me know if you find the purpose, I’ll give you a finder’s fee.