Sinead O'Connor Has Died

Photo by Morgan Lane on Unsplash

Sinead O’Connor has died. Anyone who knew anything about her is saddened, but not surprised. As the obituary in the Guardian states, the most tragic thing about the early end of her life is that it was inevitable.

She had bipolar disorder and struggled with it enormously and publicly. She struck outrage and fear into both those who followed her career and the family that tried, and then quit, supporting her. She spoke well of the medications she took that, she says, filled a hole in her and enabled her to walk upright, yet she spent most of the last decade in a psychiatric hospital, or, as she in her devilish impish way called it, the nuthouse.

Of course the accolades pour in, but most people just can’t deal with, and subsequently lie about, their experience with mental illness; either their own or, more likely, that of someone they know who struggles and fails due to the disease. We try and make mental illness nice, and when someone like O’Connor reveals how terrible it really is we deny them their voice, gloss over their troubles, and push them to the fringes. The fringes where so many cursed with severe mental illness reside.

Morrissey, one of the few people in music who truly appreciated and paid proper attention to O’Connor, condemns the people who today praise her creativity and rebellion. In fact, they thought she was deviant, even dangerous, and not meant to be taken seriously. As Morrissey rails, every once in a while they unboxed her and let her loose, made their money, had a few laughs, blamed her for her own failings, and then locked her away again. The fact that she was, and remains, relevant is a testimony to her tortured soul that tore down all obstacles to express herself and create great, albeit upsetting and alienating, art.

I, like O’Connor, have been open about my bipolar disorder. But I don’t write about the pain and the failure. I can’t afford to. I don’t have the courage. I fear being ponderous and I know that if I tell the entire truth about my experience with bipolar disorder I’ll lose my shot at a place in the normal world. Instead I paint a picture of wellness and teach people ways to successfully live with an affective disorder. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. I have mastered the ability to fake normalcy, hold a job, direct the charisma and exuberance of mania into an infectious personality that people are attracted to, and have succeeded in ways that my doctor tells me no one else he knows with such serious bipolar disorder has been able to do.

It’s exhausting. I can only do it in measured intervals, and I bring a more honest experience with bipolar disorder home. It tears the people closest to me to pieces. They wonder why I can be so perfect for everyone else and yet so inconsistent for them. I can be loving and I can be monstrous. But only at home can I be honest, and that’s a terrible thing. Terrible for me and, more so, terrible for my wife and child.

In my books I write about using meditation, movement and meaningful work to accurately predict imminent episodes of anxiety, depression or mania. Professionals have told me this is groundbreaking, and it really works. But right now all the signals are flashing that I’m beginning to go full-on crazy and I don’t know what to do with it. I want to howl like O’Connor but I have to stuff it all down. I have responsibilities and, let’s be honest, a façade to maintain in order to be bearable to other people. I write about methods to avoid the pending collapse but, in truth, they don’t always work. So all at once I completely depend on those closest to me more and more, and more and more make their lives living hells. But it’s episodic. It only lasts for a while. And I am surrounded by people willing to forgive and soldier on with me, because I try. I honestly try.

Sinead O’Connor tried, too. And failed. She was too loud about it. She went through the trials of mental illness in public and she paid the ultimate price. She taught us where honesty can get you.

I remember how important her music was to me as I was first assaulted by moods I could not control and thoughts and visions I could not turn off. We chose different paths. She howled about bipolar disorder, I buried it. She is gone. I am still here with a seemingly perfect life. My family fears the truth will one day catch up with me, but I only know how to be dishonest. Most of the time.

Almost no one can sing like Sinead O’Connor could, but her music will soon be gone. Forgotten. It’s too honest and it’s too frightful and the whole story is too painful for those of us who suffer the same demons that she did but run from them, never to be reminded that real life is a chimera out of reach, not to be aspired to, but feared like a predator threatening to take it all away, defended against by layers of myth and aspirations to be anything other than what lurks in our minds, darkly, ever-present until we can make it irrelevant, and then until it’s not.