Battler

Sinéad O’Connor has died and I will say one thing

in response to one comment on her death, a Facebook comment, a comment that seems innocuous and respectful enough on its face, a comment that even seems right:

What a tragic life.

You know what. No. I don’t want this for her and I don’t want this for us.

Sinéad O’Connor had a wildly difficult life marked by abuse and illness and loss and pain. Tragedy came, it did.

What I don’t want, what I won’t have as we’re thinking about her today, is the distancing and diminishing in that statement.

What a tragic life.

Really? Can a person’s whole existence be painted as a tragedy if they struggle?

There’s a binary under here, a bad story, and I would like to tell it to fuck off on Sinéad’s behalf and on behalf of everyone who struggles and maybe meets tragedy and then struggles some more.

The binary is:

a good life

a bad life

The binary is:

a successful, joyful life

a failed, miserable life

Is failure real? Yes. Is misery real? Yes. As are success and joy.

Success, joy, failure, misery:

These are phenomena.

What do phenomena do? They appear and disappear. All phenomena do this.

If you want to tell a lie, grab one phenomenon and smear it everywhere. Make that phenomenon definitive of a much larger area than it covers in reality. Don’t think about it too hard.

Say that Sinéad O’Connor led a tragic life.

Sinéad O’Connor experienced the power and pleasure of creation and self-expression to a degree we should all be so lucky to experience.

Sinéad O’Connor sang like an angel for decades. I mean by “angel” a shocking, electrified, winged thing, the sort of phenomenon that needs to lead with “Fear not” when they appear to mortals.

Sinéad O’Connor experienced the love and awe that is motherhood and she experienced that however she did—motherhood is a million experiences, different slices for all—and while I don’t and can’t know what she felt, mothering, I can make some educated guesses.

Sinéad O’Connor stayed alive for 56 years and she will have had to use a muscle to do that over and over again. She experienced her own strength, a thing that only happens when that strength is tested.

Sinéad O’Connor was in the spotlight and she stayed herself in the spotlight, at heavy cost. That’s a trick nowhere near the spotlight. I have to use my imagination to call up the pressure of the real spotlight but I can use it enough.

This is a small list of only what was visible and guessable for me about Sinéad O’Connor’s life, in tandem with the abuse and illness and loss and, yes, tragedy we know about.

What a tragic life.

Facebook commenter, innocuous statement-maker, have you been marked safe from a tragic life? Because it sounds like you think you have been. I hope if tragedy comes for you and struggle stretches out across your days that you won’t dishonor yourself with that binary. I hope you won’t throw your life story in a garbage can with the other bad lives.

I know I sound harsh. I have to speak harshly to crack the top of a bad pattern we get into, a way we hurt ourselves and each other.

Your life is not one or the other, tragic or triumphant, even on a smaller, more private scale. If you allow yourself to think someone else’s life is one or the other, you’ll do this to yourself just as easily and you’ll put yourself in danger of losing hope when you don’t have to.

Sinéad O’Connor was a battler. She carried the weight of sorrow. She made it quite far. Wherever she is now, I hope she’s being received with laurels, welcomed home like a hero, the same way I hope you’ll be welcomed when your time comes, in all of your dignity.