Paramours of a complacent suffering: the unquestionable allure of illness
“No aim can possibly be worth a wrecked existence. ”
Love and Pain (Vampire), 1895, Edvard Munch - Munch Museum, Oslo
Perhaps many of us know people who are tirelessly drawn to abuse. There is a curious magnet in them, a blind inner compass leading them to further circles and cycles of malignant pain, all of which they somehow welcome and unhesitatingly endure.
In British Columbia, I had a female friend, Lisa, who worked two summers in the Okanagan Valley, helping out her step-father with his landscaping business. While the father figure never once lay a hand on her, he was vocal in his disappointment of Lisa while at the same time, taking advantage of her good nature and overworking her, and yet denying her overtime pay. Still, he constantly cursed her, and a fellow employee, Joe. As a result, perhaps in need of communal shelter, the two ended up forming an attachment, later a relationship. When Lisa returned to Vancouver, while free of the exploitive shadow of her step-father, deciding no longer to be his dutiful employee, Tim in the role of boyfriend seemingly took on this additional role of abuser. Later, in a bid to cast out demons from his own abusive childhood, he became a drug addict, getting into meth.
From one volatile bond to the next.
I lost touch with Lisa.
When I attended the University of Victoria, the theater program, I was friends with the daughter of one of the professors. Like me, Chelsea was a few years older than the other fresh-faced crop of first year students. Maybe because we were drawn to each other’s premature world weariness, we hung out together. Other loner types enjoyed our company, gravitated towards us and while Chelsea could be sardonic and wry in her humor, a fun person to party with, when it was just the two of us, sharing a melancholic drink at a downtown pub, she could be quite self-deprecating. Soon, she, too attracted a despondent mate who matched her disrespect for herself. When she complained about him, I made the mistake of going beyond listening. In an effort to console, I offered the simple advice that she break up with her debasing beau. Chelsea, true to her Stockholm Syndrome, defended her mate. She told me to mind my own business. Chelsea cast me these viper stares of disdain as if by longing to help, I had hurt her. From then on, I bit my tongue and when she attacked herself or her boyfriend, I knew enough to tune it out.
Soon enough, when I discontinued with the theatre program, I lost touch with Chelsea.
Early experience of my own victimhood
The ongoing lesson in my life has been to value myself and not let other devalue me.
A long row to hoe.
When I was young, around 18, I was helping out a family friend in the Seattle area. Help out… more or less… er… getting paid under the table or doing contract work with him.
Ben was twenty years my senior, a Peter Pan type with a blonde bushy moustache, a serial monogamist, a new girlfriend every year. He also had a habit of believing that everyone should listen to him. I first got the work through my uncle and my cousin and Ben, at first, was eager to have the company. I spent a week with him at the Seattle Home Show in the venue once known as the King Dome. Every morning, we were late traipsing in, one of the last booths to set up for the morning crowd. Not that this was intentional: Ben constantly spoke up about getting up early, being there on time. “Tomorrow, Rob, up with the buzzer!”
Never happened. Even the trade show organizers began to take notice. They were on our back, reminding me and Ben our tardiness made us, as well as them, look bad. Ben’s inner rebellion kept us from getting their approval, though he was profuse in apologies.
When I started to do the actual contract work, a different story evolved. Well, similar story. We never arrived at job sites on time. Never. That alarm went off and Ben snored right through it. When he finally got going, after a morning ass-scratch and long shower, it was a race against the clock. One time Ben backed up on the highway to get an off ramp exit he had missed. Horns blared at him, yet Peter Pans never take the blame for their actions.
Our late arrivals were often met with perturbed head shakes and fervently crossed arms, and from there I took the brunt of Ben’s criticism. No matter how much I reminded him that I had little experience with tools, Ben, instead of taking a paternal role of teacher, offering to give me a quick lesson, a few pointers, he wasted his time berating me; I learned from my mistakes.
Perhaps because of my stoicism, I took this daily abuse. Of course, I pointed out his hypocrisy. He called other drivers terrible, yet he was no saint behind the wheel. Irresponsible? He was the one sleeping through his alarms. I was up at six every day, spending more time waiting for him to get his act together.
One evening, we were cleaning up or rather, I was sweeping up the garage where we had installed several custom-made shelves. We’d been there ten hours. I ached all over. The streetlamps were coming on. Ben was on the phone with his girlfriend, apologizing for not making dinner, another night maybe. I sighed, shook my head. Under the pale glare of the lone bulb, the tiny bits of metal dust sparkled; next thing, the owner of the house stepped out. A tall, attractive woman in her early thirties, her slippers scuffed the cement floor. After surveying the shelves, pursing her lips with approval, she asked if we were done. I nodded. Done. Then after glancing around, making sure it was the two of us, out of earshot of Ben, she asked me one more thing: “You work for him often?” I glanced towards the old pickup truck in the driveway. I said, once in a while. She nodded and without missing a beat said: “He’s mean.”
I grinned, and when Ben drove us back to his place for dinner, I shared with him the woman’s remarks. It was hard to fight back the grin. He deserved the truth.
A legacy into and after illness
I wouldn’t work for Ben after that. Not that I didn’t want to. Maybe a part of me enjoyed the abuse, or rather the friction. I would later work at a bookstore in downtown Vancouver and when things were not working out with my mother and step-father, I lived in an apartment in White Rock. Then, taking moody walks along the beach, I felt like this brooding Byronic hero and I would purposely take my jaunts on horridly rain days, a punitive measure of some kind.
White Rock, B.C. on a typical moody day in autumn
“He in his madness prays for storms,
And dreams that storms will bring him peace.” - Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841)
When I returned to Ontario to live with my brother and father, the self-abuse I secretly nourished was reflected in my relationship with my family. My self-flagellating nature was mirrored in how they treated me. So when the illness, the ulcerative colitis, finally arrived, I’ll admit, it was partly a response to my prior need to hurt and demean myself while also acting as a protection against further abuse. But it was also the need for attention.
This is the double-edged dilemma posed by illness. Victimhood is its own spotlight as well as its own protective veil. The ill person becomes a victim, but not as a response to being sick. Rather, they are secretly a victim before diagnosis and that inner victim blossoms and becomes more public once they are considered weak and therefore in need of attention. It is no coincidence that victim culture would coincide with the rise of social media, where digital blow-horn venues like Twitter can help broadcast a whole army of woe-is-me individuals.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) - The writings of Jung would have a lasting influence on the development of my healing. In time, I would learn to integrate aspects of the shadow self and understand my complex relationship with women through an understanding of my own anima.
Perhaps I was fortunate in that I didn’t become ill during the time of Facebook and Youtube. In truth I consider myself a private person and, looking back, to those crucial times, I doubt I would have been the type to share in the embarrassing and excruciating aspects of the illness by Tweeting or filming a video blog.
I also discovered, early on, that I was using the illness as my veil, justifying my distance from my peers. My reasoning: I am sick, why be anywhere but at home, with myself? Before getting to know Chelsea, I had been an adamant loner at the theatre department at the University of Victoria. I pitied myself, I held my victim card close to my chest. It was my mother who first pointed out that I’d been hiding behind the shield of illness and using it as my glorified hill of self-woe.
It was at this time I was reading Carl Jung’s book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. In the book, the famed author describes a time in his childhood when he was suffering through a mysterious debilitating illness. Jung soon understood, overhearing his father talk of his son’s passing-out episodes, that he himself was using the illness to avoid school. So, the young boy forced himself to return to his studies. With some effort, some patience, he managed to overcome these fainting spells and inevitably, his dependency on the illness.
When I returned to school, fresh with a new perspective, I arrived with an attitude of connecting with others, listening to them. My focus would become more exterior as a way of balance; as it turned out, it was a relief not to think or dwell on the gloomy and maudlin interior of my muddled self. Admittedly, I’d become addicted to the attention-seeking drain that was me in a state of constantly being sick. This adjustment yielded amazing results and, with patience, I overcame that attractive aspect of remaining ill.
“To become conscious of [the shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”
For some, a matter of identity
From 2004, onwards, this attraction to being ill gradually faded. While I sought out therapy and investigated the emotional aspects that were contributing to the colitis, things coming to the surface, I realized that I was on a mission. Albeit a lone one. Meaning: I would never join a club.
There was one occasion where I volunteered for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada, putting in a few hours to flip some burgers (which ironically could exacerbate the condition upon ingestion) at one of their yearly fundraisers which included members and family. However, while manning the grill, chit-chatting, sipping from a bottle of water, I remember looking at these sickly individuals around me, some in remission, some on heavy medication. My thinking at the time, and it may have been cruel, but it was honest: I don’t want to associate with these people.
The idea of being part of a club that would highlight a weakness, a handicap, make it a hallowed crown, turned my stomach (figuratively… somewhat literally). In fact, from the beginning, from day one of diagnosis, I despised the label of being ‘chronically ill.’ I rejected this and the idea that my identity could be associated with an ailing organ, or that such a tag could be applied to my sense of self and therefore negate me as a whole person. Seeing what I lacked, I didn’t see who I could be.
Gradually, I improved my life, mainly through psychology and spirituality, tackling traumas from the past, learning to forgive, to trust and love myself. Gradually as the symptoms lessened, and the bleeding disappeared, I found those people with similar illnesses were uninterested in my story of overcoming bodily dis-ease. Soon, when I met someone, and some shared they suffered a chronic bowel illness, I would mention my healing journey. They listened, but I felt they weren’t hearing me. They would ask for my number, and maybe we could talk further. Most never contacted me. I suppose that many people simply wore this badge of self-torment with a kind of emboldened pride. I suffer, therefore I am. Whatever the illness allowed them to be in their life, to talk of healing or to explore the possibility of another approach to illness was to threaten this broadcasted element of their identity.
Nonetheless, I’ve always wanted to reach out, to have a dialogue with others, even if I was against becoming a club member. When YouTube became more and more popular, on occasion I would write an email to those people making videos about having Crohn’s or colitis, hoping to spark a dialogue. When I mentioned my healing epiphanies, shifts in attitude, the past life regression therapy, they either didn’t respond to my emails or, in the case of one, suggested that maybe I didn’t really have the illness. Another girl, a popular YouTuber at the time, simply remarked that since the colitis happened when she was a baby, that is was therefore genetic so my advice wouldn’t be of any help to her. Thanks but bu-bye…
From a place of retrospect, it makes sense that she was so curt in her response. With over fifteen thousand subscribers to her channel, each video getting three thousand-plus views, why would she change her channel’s format? Suffering was the secret to her success. When you’re not sick, how can you have the attention? And the identity related to that? Healing would mean shooting the goose laying the golden egg.
The ongoing allure of illness
I’ve had to admit, some people don’t heal. These ‘some people’ simply and often… don’t want to heal. It’s not bad or it’s not good. It simply is what it is. They have emotionally embraced the illness, cultivated it to become a part of their life. Their identity involves and revolves around this new and, for them, lasting aspect. They invest in words like ‘chronic’, they hope for a cure-all, a far horizon for their dreams as they donate to research because, ineluctably, it is all an escape from self-responsibility. But really, it is a Stockholm Syndrome of the self. The self-abuser self-abuses.
I am not judging. This is a reality.
The illness is attractive while being unattractive at the same time. Like my landscaper friend, Lisa or Chelsea, there is an abusive bond that evolves, while here, it exists between the ill and the illness. As Bernie Siegel wrote in his classic, Love, Medicine and Miracles, “there are no incurable diseases, only incurable people.”
In Italo Svevo’s novel, Zeno’s Conscience, the narrator writes that ‘disease is a conviction.’ The trap of being convinced that one needs to be ill in order to reap benefits must be acknowledged, brought to light before someone can think of becoming better, becoming whole again. The illness provides some kind of surrogate missing piece in a person’s life. For those suffering, it is one thing to indulge secretly in the suffering, another thing to question it, to ask the hard questions, no matter how much they might offend someone’s sensibilities.
Our families as much as our culture tend to coddle us when we are sick. I was fortunate in that both my mother and step-father were both compassionate and skeptical, seeing the game I was playing with myself. I encourage others to be aware of, or, at least, have friends or family members to engage with them in order to investigate the reasons they want to prolong their illness. Those ill must ask themselves a few key questions: if I wasn’t sick, what would I be? Who would I be? Where would I be? And why can’t I be that now?
They also have to ask themselves: Do I want this? How does it benefit me? In 2004, a friend asked me: "How does the illness serve you?” All paths to healing begin with questions. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) once remarked, we must the live question and live them into the answers. The answer: healing and overcoming, and more healing.
“I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.”
Melancholy, 1891, Edvard Munch - Munch Museum, Oslo - Victor Hugo once wrote in his novel, Toilers of the Sea that melancholy was “the joy of being sad."