Insanity Worship

A couple of months ago, I was invited for a meal with several friends. Although the company was a mix of unpleasantry and the unknown, there were one or two familiar faces that unsurprisingly gave me the comfort nudge. Who we choose to interact with can make a lasting impact on us. This was no exception.

We chatted from movies to games to Covid and the lockdown. There was this loud voice that echoed across the table like someone screaming off her lungs for attention. She’d kickstart the jokes. She’d transition into drama reviews. The entire table of people of about nine would just get maneuvered into her exciting stories without realising they had unintentionally given away their right to invoke any personal interest at the social table. Mostly nodding to agree to whatever she had to say. I was observing from one end of the table. It was my usual spot to stay away from having my brains wrecked up by some annoying flamboyant social star.

She had guided them into the darker alleys of her subliminal visions filled with crazy characters. As her audience quietens down, now fully immersed as if relative to a hypnosis, I watched her eyes travel across the table and stopped at the host. “You..”, she said. “you are just like that strong, determined, powerful woman in that drama. I love her. She has guts. She played a psychotic serial killer that we fell so much in love with. You reminded me of her”, she uttered.

In that split second of silence, I looked around the table at the shocking faces of the guests. The host appeared incriminated. This is the reason I don’t like sitting in the centre of a long table. The corners exclude me from getting accidentally dragged into any reluctant drama. But what this lady did got people thinking about the host as being that strong, independent woman turning eventually into a manic murderer.

I did not like what was coming out of that episode. Something had changed our host. Others were turning more aggressive while she was steering herself away from it. Small talk which supposedly seemed like a harmless gesture framed itself like a memory script playing in my head over and over for weeks until it got me asking someone if playing Norman Bates would give us power over others. What was I thinking for bleeting such a ridiculously insane question?

I call this insanity worship. It isn’t something we can avoid or not think about. It has a possessive handle on our minds. It can make a sordid act look brazen.