Private pain doesn’t belong on Facebook
Sinead O’Connor posted a suicide note on Facebook this weekend.
“There is only so much any woman can be expected to bear,” she wrote on Sunday. “What was done to me this week was appalling cruelty.”
After identifying her alleged tormentors — ex-husbands, children, her son’s girlfriend, police, family, friends — the chronically embattled singer wrote, “The last two nights finished me off. I have taken an overdose. There is no other way to get respect. I am not at home, I’m at a hotel, somewhere in ireland, under another name.”
A few hours later, Irish media reported police found O’Connor. She was taken to the hospital for treatment. She is still not well, at least not emotionally. On Monday, she logged back into Facebook and chucked another grenade at those she blames for “a horrific set of betrayals.”
“I never wanna see you again,” she wrote. “You stole my sons from me. Then you had hypocrisy to come to hospital and then not be here when I wake and not pick up phone? I’m s--- to you. You’re dead to me. You killed your mother . . .
“You are child stealing murderers, I never want to see or hear from any of you again. Why were you here when you’re the ones who put me here???? And where the f--- are you now??? Murderers. Liars. Hypocrites. All of you. You caused this.”
I think we can agree on one point: O’Connor needs help. It’s possible she has needed help for a long time, going back to a previous suicide attempt in 1993. Whatever the truth of this current dispute, the larger framework upon which a private war is waged in public is sadly familiar given her past dust-ups with ex-husbands, industry execs, other musicians, siblings, agents — the list is endless.
O’Connor seems to crave friction the way the rest of us need oxygen. At the start of her career, this knack for verbal combat was lauded as an “outspoken nature.” In the late ’80s, with pop music dominated by bubble-gum chanteuses, O’Connor came across as an iconoclast, a revolutionary who wilfully blurred the lines between art and politics. She wasn’t afraid to rumble.
From ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II in 1992 after a performance on Saturday Night Live to a series of nasty open letters she sent to Miley Cyrus in 2013, conflict was her second nature. It also became her second career.
But in retrospect, these internecine battles have disfigured her image in two crucial ways: As an artist, she is seen as reflexively provocative; as a person, she has been shockingly self-destructive.
The damage from these endless clashes has also blunted our capacity for sympathy. We should feel nothing but sorry for O’Connor right now. We should wince at her anguish. We should rally behind anyone who is threatening on social media to take her own life. It’s beyond sad.
We should see this for what it is: a desperate cry for help.
But after reading her uncomfortable posts, it’s also impossible to not start asking uncomfortable questions: Why is she airing these grievances in public? How is calling your children “murders, liars, hypocrites” going to help mend the fractured relationships that are causing the underlying pain? Why not shut down your computer and find a real-life counsellor?
Then you think about all the times O’Connor contradicted herself over the years. Did she really get into a physical altercation with Prince, as she once alleged and he always denied? Does she have bipolar disorder, as she once told Oprah? Or was she misdiagnosed, as she later claimed?
From her religious views to her sexual preferences, O’Connor often says one thing only to say the opposite months or years later. Even at the peak of her fame, after the release of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” she was drifting in questionable territory. As she told the Los Angeles Times in 1990: “People shouldn’t take into account anything I said or did before the last year because I was not being honest with myself. I wasn’t saying the truth.”
All of this, yes, suggests there are mental-health issues at play. But the real tragedy is how O’Connor’s torments are desensitizing us to the plight of other sufferers. By turning her own pain into a crude spectator sport, she is doing a disservice to those without a public platform, those who are sentenced to suffer alone.
Let’s hope O’Connor gets the help she needs. She could start by helping herself and getting off Facebook. vmenon@thestar.ca