Sick of myself?

Inspired by the film Sick of Myself (Nor. Syk pike)

My grandmother once had two big boxes of medicine. She would carry them around everywhere. Medicine for high blood pressure, for her heart, nerves, from invisibility. How else could the family matron, smaller than a blade of grass, because everything is always for others, be noticed? She used to have such strange asthma attacks; I can almost hear her cries right now: “I’m choking.” Sometimes it seems to me that my whole childhood was categorised by my grandmother’s illnesses. I would come home from school, enjoying myself, Christmas was right around the corner, but you weren’t allowed to be happy because Grandmother was sick again. We slept in one room, so my night’s sleep was often interrupted by the light turning on, the sound of valerian and hawthorn tinctures in glass bottles splitting the silence. A decade later, when I went to my dad’s village, I would cut up my Thyroxine pills in the morning, for everyone to see. How many sympathetic eyes, how brightly I would shine. At home, I always forgot to drink that medicine that improves the function of the thyroid gland. Others were sick at home.

I don’t know if my grandmother was a narcissist. Are all these people of the Siberian experience like that? Are all these people who buried a child in the Taiga like that? Are they unloved, unseen children, never created in their parent’s sight? But looking at this “Scanorama” movie, I first remember the parallels with the pills. Everything is different. Everything is a little bit similar. However, it is especially easy to abhor the Sick of Myself heroine Signe. Her boyfriend gets at least some attention for his work. All artists are more or less narcissists. This is how the creator’s ego works. While Signe, just think, is an entirely non-unique person consciously making herself sick with medications that you wouldn’t even give to a horse. A grey reality vs visions of a dream life. In them, the film’s heroine is alive and (almost) healthy, surrounded by paparazzi, she is writing her memoirs, turning her destructive experience into a constructive expression. The price doesn’t matter when the camera flashes and microphones surround you, when articles about you are ranked on the front pages, and when so many thumbs up and hearts are handed to you.

Oh, it’s so easy to be disgusted by Signe — I’m a creator and artist, I’m exploiting my illness for real work. I will soon conclude a peace agreement with my ego. We will smoke a peace pipe, and then the ego will be allowed to make contact with the world in every possible way, even though it likes to be on top the most.

But is everything so simple with the myth of Narcissus? As Leonarda Jekentaitė writes in De profundis, on the one hand, it is self-love, pathology: “The unresolved moral problem turns into psychological or physiological trauma. Man replaces the suffering of his conscience with physical suffering. As a sick person, he can expect (and often demand) sympathy and greater attention, thus shifting responsibility on the Other’s shoulders. In other words, beyond neurotic symptoms, there is a moral problem and lies that are revealed through psychoanalysis” (p. 110). It reminds me of my grandmother. And myself.

On the other hand, there is so much beauty in the world. So many distorted forms. There are so many lies in the world, a face afflicted with perfection is truly better than that: “Beautiful Narcissus turns away from the ugly reality to himself and dies, but does not accept it. Death is a danger that always arises for beauty because beauty draws attention to the imperfection of reality” (p. 118).

Is it better to look at yourself, to focus on yourself, if you see beauty there? Or are you more sick of double standards? For people who do not dare to commit crimes for what they so desperately desire? No, I’m not judging Signe, or maybe I’m justifying her as I do myself – I just really wanted to present a multifaceted look. As long as Narcissus only harms himself, and as long as he’s the only one who dies, we can treat it as a sacrifice on the altar of unrecognised beauty? I am annoying and provocative, and yes, it is much more acceptable to rejoice in and admire works worthy of it, to admire Others and the world, and it is more acceptable not to create a solipsist self-world. Narcissus, lift your eyes to the heavens for once, to the earth – see how wonderful the miracle of life is. What if Signe, what if my grandmother, and what if I can only stay that way? Absurd, unhealthy, tragically comic. Isn’t that the poison of true beauty?

` Just in case, I check my medicine bag. I look at my poems from the side. I leave you with two points of view highlighted in L. Jekentaitė’s book: “So, in psychoanalysis, two alternative views of Narcissus are formed. One – widely known, its proponents argue that it is an archetype of selfish limitation, closedness to the world threatened by destruction, when self-love becomes pathological. Supporters of the other view unexpectedly sense a positive aspect in this image: it is allegedly a desperate reminder to the world about the human happiness programme.<...> The love for himself and the death of the beautiful Narcissus reveals a problematic psychological mechanism of catharsis. The artist, experiencing it themselves and bringing us closer to catharsis, allows us to fully understand with all senses that it is difficult to describe the borderline state: whether they are a madman, an amoral type, or a humanist faithful to their ideal.” (p. 118-119).

So, are you really sick – of yourself?

This essay is translated from Lithianian by Gabriella Žičkienė.

Lina Buividavičiūtė is a poet and literary critic. She is an author of three poetry books in Lithuanian. The poetry book "Dark ages" will be published in Spain this year. Lina is a Pushcart prize nominee and two of her poems won Honorable mention at Writer's digest competitions.