The Right To Die?

Last updated on: November 5, 2016 at 1:45 pm by Anne Carpenter

The Right To Die? 2016-11-05T13:45:01-08:00 Anne Carpenter

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"Ivan the Terrible and His Son," Ilya Repin

“Ivan the Terrible and His Son,” Ilya Repin

What I resent most deeply about the “right to die” movement is that it sounds exactly like the voice in my head always whispering that I should die. This is not, and could never be, a formal argument against the so-called right to die. But still: it sounds just like the part of my brain that is suicidal. You can imagine my confusion.

There is a part of me that always wants to die. Since my mental breakdown and even after strenuous efforts at recovery, this is one of the facts of being me. There is always a dark corner of my heart that growls angrily at everything I do wrong, that silently counts every sin with complete revulsion, that viciously tells me how it’d be much better for everyone if I were dead. I still wake up from nightmares of sharp objects and blood. Knowing that these are a mess of memories and worries is only a little soothing.

Oddly, the only solution is to be a bit hospitable toward the part of me that hates myself. To try and love even that. Rage only makes it worse. Like kicking a starving animal: violence only invites more violence.

Either way, there is always this part of me that hums with the need to eliminate my worst problem, which is me. A part of me that finds it much easier to be angry at myself rather than the world. A part of me that laughs and cries at the relief it would be to die.

It is so very hard to be alive.

I suffer from severe mental illness. I’ve known physical pain literally since the day I was born. After all, I was born too early, which fucked me up for the rest of my life. Then there are the long and lonely hospital visits that populate my childhood and adolescence. Their perplexing violence. The abuse I knew from a young and vulnerable age until well into my twenties. The absolute incomprehension of my family, my parents.

The years and years of (sometimes all too literal) torture follow me, so that it is indeed quite difficult to be alive. Whether I imagine the physical pain that never leaves me, or the heartache of everything else, I feel as if I have wandered thousands of miles and hundreds of years simply to wake up today. And there is a part of me quite grateful to be alive, and another that just hurts.

In other words, the part of me that wants to die has plenty of ammunition.

You must take a moment, then, to imagine my breathless confusion when I read essays on the right to die. They sound just like the part of me that wants to die right now. Hell, they’ve already allowed a victim of abuse to be euthanized. I hardly see the difference between her and me, except I’m older, and so more tired. Why should I be alive? The right to die movement cannot tell me the difference between the voice in my head, the voice I’m told is wounded and wrong, and the proper “right” to die. Is there a difference, even?

Shall I die?

A part of me rages. Burns with fury at a world that, yet again, can offer no comfort at all, no anchor against the snarling voice in my head. Of course, of course the world would be like this. It does not want any of us alive, says the voice in my head. And here the world arrives again, smiling, with its medicine meant to kill. The world hates you, says a part of me, and you’d be better off dead.

As a child, I can remember whimpering as grownups held me down to jam needles into my arms. They told me it was good for me, that it would help. Well, it hurt. This right to die does not seem so very different from that. Is yet another terrible thing good for me?

They say that the right to die eases pain. Every cynical bone in me laughs at this. Laughs so hard. I’m incredibly fucking familiar with pain, thank you. As if pain can be escaped at all! As if soothing pain didn’t also hurt! All you want is not to look at me anymore, the broken part of me seethes. You hate my pain. Go ahead and call your hate dignity: I have scars all over my arms and I’m laughing right at you.

Not an ounce of me believes that this is really about pain. I’m too broken to believe that. All my traumatized ears hear is an effort at control, an effort to be in control. And that is what makes me laugh most of all: the delirious belief that we’re in control of much of anything at all. I’m too much a creature of abuse, for too long, to even blink at that.

It’s confusing, you see. I’m only trying to explain my confusion, my complete distrust. This thing – the right to die movement – sounds just like the broken part of me, and they sound like they hate that broken part of me as much as it hates them. I know you want me dead, this part of me growls, and I’ll fucking get there first. It’s agony.

I am, and perhaps always will be, a shivering young child left alone in a hospital room after terrible things happened to her. This child in me howls in absolute confusion.

And the right to die sings this child a familiar little lullaby: Hold still, now. This will only hurt a little…

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