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Over the past few years, Sinead O’Connor’s personal life has unfortunately been plagued with significant struggle with mental health. She posted a suicide note on Facebook in late 2015, there were a pair of other suicide scares in mid-2016, and now it again looks like the singer has seen happier days. On August 3, she posted a 12-minute video on Facebook, filmed from the New Jersey Travelodge motel she says she’s living in, saying that she’s lonely, dealing with a kidney stone, and is suicidal.
In the clip, she said her psychiatrist is the only person in her life and compared mental illness to drugs:
“I’m now living in a Travelodge hotel in the arse end of New Jersey. I’m all by myself and there’s absolutely nobody in my life except my doctor, my psychiatrist, the sweetest man on Earth who says I’m his hero. That’s about the only thing keeping me alive at the moment. The fact that I’m his bloody hero. And that’s kind of pathetic.
Mental illness is a bit like drugs. It doesn’t give a sh*t who you are. Equally you know what’s worse is the stigma who doesn’t give a sh*t who you are. All the people who are supposed to be loving you and taking care of you are treating you like sh*t.”
Surely, the thousands of people who live with mental illness every day can relate to her sentiments there. O’Connor also wrote in the video description, “I Made This Video Because I Am One Of Millions,” and said in the clip that she’s “not staying alive for [herself]”:
“I’m fighting like all the millions I know to stay alive everyday which I’m doing because I love the people that are doing this to me. I’m not staying alive for me. If it was me I’d be gone straight away back to my mom because I walked this Earth alone for two years as punishment for being mentally fucking ill and being angry that nobody would fucking take care of me, specifically for being suicidal.”
In the days following the video’s upload, O’Connor made several posts on her Facebook page, including links to Youtube videos, the address of the motel she’s staying at, and one that reads, “I’m awake alone, in labor with the kidney stone still trying to get through the tubes to my bladder. All males who claim they ‘love’ me are sleeping peacefully. Elsewhere. #SomethingVeryWrongWithThisPicture”
She also made a post reaching out to Jacques Viau, A Toronto native who lists his occupation as “UX & Creative Copywriter at Kobo,” and asked for a spare room to stay in. In response to the string of disheartening posts, a representative of O’Connor posted an update on the singer’s Facebook page, saying that O’Connor is “safe, “not suicidal,” and “surrounded by love and receiving the best of care”:
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Here’s hoping that this most recent Facebook post is true, that O’Connor is doing better than it may seem to those of us who aren’t directly involved, and that she is receiving the help and attention she needs in these trying times.
