WHEN CLARRY TOPPED HIMSELF,
NO ONE KNEW WHY…
…NO ONE.
Satellite
television has brought me a fascinating window on a wider world and the
opportunities to observe and try to understand people from a vast range of
cultures - people whom one had seen, if one saw them at all, as ‘performers’ in
documentaries or devised programmes and subject to the presentation and
interpretation of the programmes compilers.
Now
I can watch them completely untainted by the intervening ‘editor
interpreter’. I watch them in their own
dramas, chat shows, news bulletins and a variety of presentations and versions
of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ I
look at faces and expressions, moods and reactions, but ‘look’ and ‘watch’ are
the two operative words, for apart from sensing the general mood of the piece I
have not the slightest idea of what is being said. When I watch Chinese television there are
subtitles – but they also are in Chinese.
I
would dearly like to know what Dunia and the people whom she interviews on Abu Dhabi television are discussing, because it appears to
be serious and intelligent, but apart from words that sound vaguely like ‘Iraq’ there is
nothing to guide me. Worse still is a
news bulletin when the person being interviewed is speaking English, but is
then being talked over and the screen has rolling subtitles all in Arabic.
The
world and outlook of those who are locked into their inner voices is something
like this. They have their own
transmission received inside their head that no one else can hear or comprehend,
while, viewed on the screen of life that is going on outside them, they see
people, faces expressions, actions, moods and reactions, and try to interpret
something that is far off.
A
world that is almost unreachable from within a mind and body that are often
numbed by the drugs that are meant to make life more bearable (but which often
are there solely to ‘contain’ them).
A world
with which they find it increasingly difficult to communicate. So difficult, that attempts to do so may be abandoned
altogether, especially when the inner world can appear warm and friendly.
Is
it easiest simply to abandon them to their inner world and the companions that
frequent it? An inner world that can be
welcoming, friendly, comforting – an inner world that suddenly can spawn terror
and threat; create immeasurable anxiety; propose devilish and obscene compacts
– compacts that if accepted can bring down an even heavier rain of threat and
castigation from the unseen tormentors.
One
can go on and on in seemingly endless speculation, and offer insights and
advice that may or may not have relevance to an individual – if indeed one knew
that the torment was actually there behind the closed door that a life and the
face fronting it have become.
It
would be difficult to forget the time when my stable was being re-roofed. Right to the fore of the action were the two
Geordies – Big Derek and Brian. They
came and worked - and worked hard - for ‘readies’, and stayed until about one
o’clock when they went to the King’s Head for a liquid lunch, and then possibly
an afternoon fishing off the beach.
One
morning they came and they were immensely subdued - in fact, for such a big man
it was odd that Derek seemed close to tears.
“Clarry’s topped his self” said Brian eventually. Work was pointless, and they went off to the
King’ Head for more appropriate solace.
Clarry
– or Clarence to give him his Sunday name – had farmed with brother Ronnie,
until they had given up the farm. But
farmers never retire, and one met them here and there as they helped out on
other farms - hedging, dykeing, hay-timing - or working in people’s gardens.
Clarry
had retired to a cottage beside the main road and I saw him frequently as he
worked around a friend’s premises. This
particular morning, his daughter had come downstairs, to a fire newly laid in
the grate, a cup of tea part drunk and still warm, a sandwich half eaten, and,
puzzled, had gone outside to find Clarry hanging. And no one knew why!
That
was over ten years ago, and I don’t think anyone knows to this day. Why? There in his inner world something had thrown
a switch – but he had not been ill that anyone knew about – certainly not
mentally. What was it that Clarry
couldn’t talk to anyone about – confide - consult?
I
thought of him in happier times, as, for instance, when the local Shepherds’
Meet and a meet of the Beagles had coincided, and the Brown Cow had been open
all day – and Clarry hadn’t wasted a minute.
There he was, well into the evening, a huge turkey drumstick in his
hand, beating time to the choruses of the hunting songs, and swaying perilously
to and fro, and the picture of him swaying gently at the end of a rope is one
that even now I find unbearable.
I
have difficulty revisiting the time when I desperately wanted to die and escape
from all that plagued my mind and the situation that I couldn’t understand but
from which I frantically wanted to flee.
I wasn’t then hearing voices, but had seemingly insurmountable
problems. Why didn’t I just do it? As I wrote earlier, it had to appear to be an
accident, and I couldn’t devise one that I thought would be convincing. Relevant to my thoughts about Clarry – I
couldn’t talk to anyone, because I couldn’t put my inner agony into words.
I
vaguely remember once saying to a Consultant Psychiatrist, as I attempted to
broach the subject, something such as “I wish I had a terminal illness” –
thinking that that would be a way out that would not create problems for
anyone. “I suppose you want cancer” he
said – and said it with a sneer; nothing else will describe his tone. I never tried to speak to anyone about it
ever again, and I have only recalled the painful times for the purpose of
writing to you to help you to understand the torment in the unseen world behind
the facade of a face, and a life that, seemingly, is being ‘lived’ successfully.
‘Writing
to you’ – I began to write more then five years ago. Some has come easy; some with the pain of
unhappiness and disaster revisited. I
hope that it has been worthwhile in that it may help someone. I began with the words of the diminutive
Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Camera - and cannot think of any that are more
appropriate to end with.
Don’t get annoyed
If the people coming to see you,
If the people wanting to talk to you
Can’t manage to express
The uproar raging inside them.
Much more important
Than listening to the words
Is imagining the agonies
Fathoming the mystery
Listening to the silences
(And, with those words, in 2003, I completed my Book.)
Yes. Writing to you. Yes, you. It may be that you are the one to whom I was writing,
whom I had in mind during all of those five years.
Chapter
One bears the title “We had to destroy it to save it…”.
The
‘it’ in question was my mind. And I had all
of the material necessary to be able to write a full and minutely detailed
account - I had all of my medical notes
covering a period of thirty years.
But
it was only with you in mind that I could read and face the personal agonies
within – and then write about them
To
read and recall how, step by step, therapy after therapy, drug after drug, my
life, my home, my career, my family were slowly peeled away – and then to
recall how all of this had been the ‘gratuitous invention’ of ‘psychiatry.
You
see – there had been nothing wrong with me at the outset – other than
uncontrollable diarrhoea – yes - uncontrollable diarrhoea.
There were times – many times – when I would have
abandoned the whole project. Even hoping
that my computer would ‘crash’ and everything that I had written would be lost
–
because I knew I would never start again…
And that was before I had even begun to
think about writing about
‘Hearing Voices’
- which, after all, is the reason for
writing in the first place.
But
I always came back to you – yes, it is you again. I used to say to myself “If I can help only one
person – just one person – back to
sanity, then it will have been worth it.”
And
thankfully, it has been worth it! Yes it has. You in your various forms have emailed or
written to me to tell me just what the book has meant to you.
Yes,
you have been “Al….” a seafarer in the Philippines “…now you inspire me a
lot.” Or Igor in Moscow…. Monica in Mumbai who was desperately
worried about the harm that anti-psychotic drugs were having upon her son. (So many parents and carers have written as
she did.)
You
have been Anne-Marie who had been assailed by malign voices while in a plane
returning from a very happy holiday.
Then
again, you have been Rosey in Arizona,
so worried for your son.
My
heart went out to you, James, on Death Row in a gaol in Georgia, who
could still find the will to write to me, in spite of a very uncertain future…
It was Steve, in Lancashire,
who finally clinched it for me –
It was Steve who wrote the ‘magic’ words –
“You have saved my sanity”
So, if you are reading this and wondering what the
book is all about, it is free to download on the Internet – yes, free.
Who knows – I may have written it for you.
LISTENING
TO THE SILENCES
IN
A WORLD OF HEARING VOICES
ROY VINCENT
MID-SUMMER 2014
