Image: Suicide by Scandinavian artist Joakim Back.
The most moving character in Nick Hornby's amazing novel A Long Way Down,
about four would-be suicides who end up in a kind of crazy self-managed
support group, is Maureen, the woman stuck looking after her severely
handicapped teenage son. She is an example of a sufferer from what I
called in my recent post on managing stress
the 'fourth source', the chronic stress that imprisons the sufferer for
a long period or even a lifetime, as contrasted to the three 'transient
sources' of stress -- sudden changes, time pressures, and unwelcome
surprises. I explained:
[This
fourth source of stress is usually] a longer-term adversity, such as
having to look after a loved one (or worse, someone you don't love), or
putting up with constant physical or emotional pain or disfigurement or
a life-altering disability. The people I know who face such stresses
have told me they don't feel courageous or like martyrs: What seems to
us to be courage, they say, is simply not having any other choice -- we
do what we must. Nevertheless, to me, this would be a form of
imprisonment, and, like all of nature's creatures, imprisonment is what
we fear most, the form of stress that has no resolution, no relief, no
way of coping through resilience. Those who are imprisoned, regardless
of whether anyone thinks that imprisonment is real or self-inflicted,
are the unhappiest people, I think, in the world. It is no wonder they
seek escape, solace, through drugs or religion or suicide.
I
know quite a few people in this situation. My father is coping with his
second wife's long-term dementia and physical illness. Some of my friends
(and some respondents to the above post) are coping with similarly ill
elders or children or other loved ones, and have put their own lives on
hold, indefinitely. I know people who are living themselves with
chronic agonizing physical diseases, or debilitating, exhausting mental
illness. I know people who are in prison or some other involuntary
institution, or trapped in jobs that they have no choice but to stay
in. I know people who stay, for reasons that fill me with astonishment
and dread, in relationships where they are chronically and severely
abused. I know people who are addicted to substances that make their
lives, and those of people who once loved them, an endless living hell.
These
are people in prisons as real as if they had bars and locks on them,
who live lives of what Thoreau called "quiet desperation". Suicide and
other quick escapes from the constant suffering and agony are, for
most, 'a long way down', as Hornby explains. For them, there is no
conceivable way out.
Some people have asked me what to do if you
find yourself in this situation. I have no answers. In my youth I
suffered from severe depression, and while it did not last that long it
kept coming back, and when I was in that terrible place fighting the
noonday demon it was as if time stretched out forever. I got lots of
advice, most of it bad, and all of it useless. I tried all the
solutions and none of them worked, and most of the people I spoke to
admitted none of them worked for them either.
Some of you may
think it's unfair or unreasonable to compare someone suffering from a
crippling physical or mental illness or addiction to someone coping
with the illness of someone else, but I see these all as just different
types of prison -- the experience is the same, and I will not pass
judgement whether one prison is more honourable than another. Severe
and uncontrollable suffering is unbearable, and chronic suffering that
just endures and goes on and on every day is a thousand times more
unbearable. I have no answers. We do what we must. Part of my
unbearable grief for Gaia is feeling for all those in the world who are
suffering, but my sympathy doesn't help any.
In Hornby's book, his character Maureen says:
You know that things
aren't going well for you when you can't even tell people the simplest
fact about your life, just because they'll presume you're asking them
to feel sorry for you. I suppose it's why you feel so far away from
everyone, in the end; anything you can think of to tell them just ends
up making them feel terrible.
When
I was in the blackness of depression the fact that people cared for me
and worried about me and wanted to help meant nothing to me. They
couldn't do anything. I didn't expect anything from them. I didn't care
about them, and the ones that really pestered me with worry or useless
suggestions or offers to help (if I told them how) or gratuitous advice
("cheer up, snap out of it") just annoyed me. Depression is still
considered by many a 'selfish' affliction, a weakness that indicates
lack of resolve or lack of courage, so at least I didn't have to cope
with lots of people worrying about me. I did what I had to do, and was
fortunate enough, unlike some, to wake up from the nightmare, with no
one's help, including my own.
So I don't know what to say to
people who ask me What Can I Do? -- to make the suffering less
unbearable, to reconcile oneself to one's lot. Some people swear by
support groups, not those put on by well-intentioned (or not)
psychologists or social workers, but those run by fellow sufferers who
(supposedly) know what you're going through, and can perhaps sympathize
and offer coping tips. They never worked for me, so I won't recommend
them, but I guess it depends on your situation and your ability to get
value from these things. I doubt prisoners on death row have a support
group, or would want one. For some it can help just to talk it out, and
if that works for you, that's great, provided you can find a patient
listener. That never worked for me either, though it has for some
people I know, and I've tried to become a better listener, and to
realize that my role is not to proffer answers (since there usually are
none) but rather to help the other person make sense of their
predicament and their agony in their own minds. I'm not great at this,
but with practice I'm getting better.
There are some who turn
to drugs or religion or suicide, none of which I ever had much use for,
or would recommend, but neither would I pass judgement on those who
find any of these works for them, as long as the perpetrator of these
'cures' doesn't gouge the sufferer for a lot of money when they are
vulnerable to being gouged.
I'm sorry. I usually offer answers
or at least approaches on this blog, but for sufferers in long-term
prisons of one kind or another I don't have any to offer. If other
readers have suggestions, they're more than welcome to post them in the
comments thread below (or e-mail them to me if the temperamental Radio
Userland comments thread doesn't work).
That's all I've got.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
