The Woman They Called Eccentric

Said she was just “different.” A free spirit. A quirky woman with too many ideas and too few filters. They spoke about her with a kind of amused detachment, like she was a character from a novel — too strange to understand, but too entertaining to ignore.

But I saw the shadows behind her eyes.

No one else did.

They never noticed the way her gaze would drift as though she were trying to hold onto a world only she could see — or hear. I watched the fog roll across her mind like a silent storm creeping in off the sea. While they admired her quirks, I stood in the dark trying to interpret her silence, translate her delusions, and make sense of her pain.

When I was seven, I wrote down her symptoms in my diary.

“She says the TV speaks to her,” I scribbled in shaky handwriting. I didn’t know what schizophrenia was. I just knew something wasn’t right. And maybe, if I could name it, I could fix it.

At ten, I made flashcards.

Each one had a piece of her identity on it: her name, her birthday, my name.

“Who am I?” I’d ask gently.

Sometimes she remembered.

Sometimes she didn’t.

On the really bad days, I learned to hide the knives.

Not always from her, but from the world — the same world that refused to believe someone like her could be dangerous. Not malicious. Just… lost. Lost enough to hurt herself. Lost enough to maybe not come back.

I spent years trying to stitch her together with threads far too thin for a child to hold.

I screamed for help — not once, but countless times.

I begged family, teachers, neighbors to see what I saw.

“She needs help,” I’d cry. “Real help.”

But they laughed.

Called me dramatic.

Said I was just like her.

And so the years passed — her unraveling, me patching her together as best I could.

Until one day, she collapsed.

Right there, in front of the same people who’d ignored every warning.

Right there, in the middle of our bystander society — an audience so captivated by spectacle, yet blind to suffering.

Suddenly, it was real.

Suddenly, it was urgent.

And then they looked to me.

Their eyes were wide, hollow with guilt and helplessness, as if I’d been hiding some secret miracle all along. As if I had the power to save her — and just hadn’t used it.

But there was no miracle.

Only my hands, blistered from years of trying to hold together a woman the world refused to believe was broken.

Now I want to scream again.

Not out of anger.

But from emptiness.

Because for so long, I threw her ropes, trying to pull her from the waters of her mind — only to realize I was drowning too.

We were both sinking.

She would stare into my eyes with this vacant, expectant look, waiting for hope. Because somehow, I had become her lighthouse.

Long before I ever learned to swim.

I was her anchor and her lifeline.

And she held one end of the rope, trusting that I could pull her back to shore.

But the rope was wrapped around my neck.

Every time I pulled, I lost a part of myself.

I can barely float. I never learned to swim.

Some days, I wonder if I should just let the tide take me.

There’s no glory in survival when you're both going under.

No applause for the child who saves someone while drowning herself.

I loved her.

I still do.

And I hate that love wasn't enough.

The world romanticized her quirks.

Her wild laughter, her unpredictable behavior, her refusal to follow the rules.

They called it artistic.

They called it beautiful.

But they never stayed long enough to see what happened after the curtain closed — when the lights dimmed and she couldn’t find her way back.

They never held her during the panic attacks.

They didn’t see her rock back and forth whispering to herself.

They didn’t hear her begging voices to stop.

I did.

They saw a woman dancing in the rain.

I saw her drowning in a storm.

Now she’s quiet.

Catatonic.

Gone, though still breathing.

And I’m still here.

Trying to carry the weight of a lifetime spent loving someone who slipped through the cracks.

This isn’t just her story.

It’s mine too.

And maybe yours.

Because behind every “eccentric” person is someone quietly holding them together — often unnoticed, often forgotten, often breaking too.

We need to stop glorifying madness and start recognizing the pain underneath it.

Not everyone who smiles is okay.

Not every “quirky” woman is just being free-spirited.

Sometimes she’s drowning.

And sometimes, the person trying to save her is too.