Responsibility for Suffering

The View from Suicide Watch

People get taken over by this pain-body,
because this energy field, that almost has a life of its own,
it needs to, periodically, feed on more unhappiness. -Dr. Sebi.

I once spent a chunk of the bright hours of a Monday in A&E. Throughout the weekend that led up to it, I had been a demon- volatile, emotionally radioactive, and I had two mental breakdowns. For a brief time, I was even on suicide watch, which sounds a lot more dreadful, and dramatic, than it really was, but it’s true all the same.

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Some Context:

When I was three years old, under the false guise of protection, I was taken in the middle of the night by my mentally unstable mother from our home in Cork, brought to Ballymun in Dublin, and then up to Belfast. We left behind our gaff, our dog, my father, my grandparents, and a life meant for me, made up of safety, love, and genuine protection. I was forced to grow up in the cold north, far away from the handier, more gentle life I was supposed to live.

Once in Belfast, my mother began a relationship with a man named John- Fuck it, his full name was John Lavery, and even now, looking at it typed out on the page in front of me, my skin is crawling. I’m afraid of it.

At their hands, and steel-toe-capped boots, I suffered more than ten years of physical, mental, and sexual abuse.

The nature of such prolonged abuse is that my growth as a human being was stunted- altered permanently. It meant I was a timid child, chronically lonely, depressed, and it left me without a strong grip on reality itself. I would regularly make up lies about my life, given that I had spent most of it at that point lying to everyone outside my gaff about what was going on inside it.

In secondary school, I told people that I was adopted, and that my real parents were in fact dead. In primary school, I would regularly turn up with clear evidence of abuse on my face, and the staff did nothing. Vere Foster Primary School. It’s been knocked down at this stage, and I will never forgive a single one of those bastard teachers after they lifted my t-shirt off my body, saw those bruises, and sent me home that afternoon anyway.

When a child is raised in abuse or extreme trauma, the wiring of their brain aligns itself differently than it would in a loving home. For the rest of their lives, the world will look different, more threatening, dangerous. Relationships will become turbulent and messy. For example, my family in Cork (who I thankfully reunited with as a teenager) would have often slagged me for the apparent amount of relationships I had ran in and out of in my early twenties. My brother, who grew up with both parents in Cork, and is in his early twenties now, has been in the same loving relationship for God knows how long.

My teenage years and early twenties were chaos. My mental health had completely dissipated. I left school at sixteen with the one GCSE in History. Then, I honestly couldn’t count the amount of jobs I ran through. That was when I was working, when I wasn’t, I was struggling to get myself out of the bed at all. Once out of the bed though, I was taking the piss with the drink and I really took the piss with drugs. I was selfish, sad, frightened, and very, very lonely.

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And I cannot be changed, I cannot be changed, no
Trust me, I've tried
I just end up right at the start of the line
Drawin' circles -Mac Miller

Anyway, so I’m sitting in the waiting room waiting to be seen, and I’ve had a decent grip on things for the past few years. I’m much more of a real person now, my life is more calm, and fulfilling. No more drugs. But for some reason unknown at the time, my mental state collapsed in on itself.

The triage nurse asked me candidly about what was going on, and I spoke back to her uncomfortably. Before long, she was writing down my description, taking note of my eyes, hair, tattoos, and my clothing. She spoke to the person I was with and told them that if they had to leave at any point, they were to inform the staff, “so that Seán isn’t left on his own.” I was standing in the room at the time.

I told the person I was with that, “I think I’m on suicide watch,” and they agreed, then we began to wonder what was to happen if they had to leave, and inform the staff. Would someone come and simply watch me to be sure I didn’t kill myself? I found the whole thing a bit ridiculous, but I was rightly then reminded that suicide rates were sharply rising, and this was no doubt protocol.

I did have suicidal thoughts, intrusively, but I wasn’t suicidal, and I was relieved when the doctor acknowledged as much. He recognised I wasn’t a danger to myself or anyone around me, and referred me then to an emergency mental health unit. The unit consisted of two, sweet, middle-aged women, who very softly told me I had to go home and ring my GP.

In the end, not much benefit came from going to the hospital other than the time to think.

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I went through hell,

I’m expectin’ heaven. -Jay Z

I had dabbled in different forms of counselling and therapy for years. But if I was being very honest with myself, I was avoiding it. I would often complain about the different ways it simply didn’t work for me, knowing full well that I had never really given it a chance.

The thing is, I found it unfair that I had to go to therapy at all. I found it all so unfair that I had come through so much but still the trauma would weigh painfully on my chest, and I had to actively remove it in that way, hadn’t I the right to just allow it to fall off? I still find it unfair.

But that feeling of unfairness, as comforting as it is, often allows us to feel that it’s okay to neglect personal responsibility. I found my calling, and a real, solid love, and I let them lead me through life with the trauma following behind me like a shadow.

I neglected my own responsibility for the pain, for the suffering I had endured, and that made room in me for it to grow and fester and bring me back to square one, in A&E. It even grew outside of myself, and the people around me suffered from it too. The people I love, hurt by me, because I was hurt myself.

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I think most of Ireland is now aware of intergenerational trauma, we all know what it is, where it comes from, and why it happens. But, I’m unsure how many of us realise how tangible the thing is. The remnants of the abuse I suffered are already seeping into my adult life, as they have been since the abuse ended, the same way they did during. If I don’t accept my responsibility for it, then it will seep into the lives of my children, and they will suffer for it, as will my grandchildren, and so on.

I didn’t ask for any of this. The trauma and hardships we are given are always unwanted. But they are ours all the same. They belong to us. And so, me must ensure that the fear-altered blood stays in our own veins, and the habits and forms of self-protection we develop must be dismantled, for the sake of our loved ones, our children, and Ireland herself.

So I set free myself from all the guilt that I thought I made
So I set free my mother all the hurt that she titled shame
So I set free my cousin, chaotic for my mother's pain

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So I set free the power of Whitney, may she heal us all
So I set free our children, may good karma keep them with God
So I set free the hearts filled with hatred, keep our bodies sacred
As I set free all you abusers, this is transformation -Kendrick Lamar