"LIFE is pain! I wake up every morning, I'm in pain. I go to work in pain. You know how many times I wanted to just give up, how many times I've thought about ending it?" -- Dr. Gregory House
It's not common for me to cry when I watch House, but something about that scene last Monday shook me in its familiarity. I've had that rage for the greater part of four years. Truly, you don't know what pain will do to you until it seizes hold of your life.
But what enrages House in this scene is not his own despair, rather the notion that his cancer-stricken best friend is entitled to resign himself to death. Which begs the question, whose life is it? Do we owe our suffering to the people around us, if it means they can keep us around for their own benefit?
There are certainly days (and weeks, and years) that I wasn't sticking around for my own sake, which implies that a part of me DOES feel obligated to endure my own circumstances to prevent the heartbreak of my loved ones. Intellectually, however, I'm not sure that we owe anybody anything.
The show's upcoming termination sucks. Our society needed his character. The endless drip of self-affirmative "Think Positive" -esque books and shows and slogans has dulled us into fake-a** shells. Seems kind of backwards that ultra-positivity is cultivating sickness. We don't even know WHAT we feel anymore, because we're not ALLOWED to feel it. Give me some cynicism, sarcasm, and pessimism any day over plastered-on smiles.
I remember when Jon Stewart had Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show to discuss her book, "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America." Ehrenreich scoffs at how you can't even get away with 'negativity' if you have cancer ... it's so true! People will demand hope of you, with an insistence that you don't wallow, but rather remain ever-optimistic, with a mind-over-matter mentality. So really, your average, ordinary breed of daily whining is intolerable.
I know I definitely feel that my actual emotions are not acceptable to others. If they were, I probably wouldn't have to write them here. I probably wouldn't have to write a blog about suicide, because I probably wouldn't have become suicidal in the first place. And I probably wouldn't have to write, period, because society would instead endorse open communication that accepts, rather than denies, all that is part of the human experience.
"I know I definitely feel that my actual emotions are not acceptable to others. If they were, I probably wouldn't have to write them here. I probably wouldn't have to write a blog about suicide, because I probably wouldn't have become suicidal in the first place. And I probably wouldn't have to write, period, because society would instead endorse open communication that accepts, rather than denies, all that is part of the human experience."
ReplyDeleteYes. Yes...
How?
How can we help make a shift in the world toward a society that accepts, rather than denies, all that is part of the human experience?
I think about that question a lot.
I think maybe just by putting our truths out there, we are already, even in some small way, shifting the paradigm...
and yet there must be more.
I think it requires a lot of courage ... more than I have personally at this point ... from people who have survived their own suicidal minds. People who are willing to face that stigma head-on.
ReplyDeleteYour own bravery in addressing the difficult stuff is what it takes.
Or maybe Oprah coming back on, and you going on her show;) Maybe she could interview you on the OWN network=)
I love the question: Who's life is it?
ReplyDeleteBesides the fact that most just don't live for themselves pretty much at all (all their behaviors are for others, because of others, or in reaction to others), I think it's ironic that the usual self help says your life is your own, but then says you must live it, endure it (no matter how sane or rational of mind you are) for the sake of others.
Like you noticed, your feelings are NOT acceptable to others. You're not ALLOWED them. Yet they say your life is your own.
But I can imagine a scenario where a perfectly fine mind is just done with it, right? I think they allow it in Washington state. And that's why its controversial, because society teaches two things, and the two things are opposed...
Either our life is our own or it isn't...
It is quite the contradiction. I also think a lot about the fact that we didn't get to choose whether or not we wanted to be brought into this world, or what we'll be forced to endure while here.
DeleteI also find it troubling when people attempt to "help" someone by focusing on how much they mean to others, how it would affect others if they were gone...because it completely changes the focus from that person's struggle to somebody else's feelings. The message is: what you're going through doesn't matter. Just another way in which we're not allowed our own feelings.
i don't know who you are, what you do, where are you live. i visit your blog for take house's line. but i sympathize with your post and i feel i already know what you wanna say. i'm not the only person who think about these things. i'm so joyful with that recognition. thx.
ReplyDeleteJust knowing that WE ARE NOT ALONE is a first step out of the darkness. Thanks for stopping by.
ReplyDelete