“Two Arms and a Head: The Death of a Newly Paraplegic Philosopher”, 2008-02-24 ():
[review; Paper/suicide note by a philosophy graduate who went on a motorcycle tour of Mexico and ran into a goat, instantly becoming a paraplegic. Atreus discusses how paraplegia robs him of the ability to do almost everything he valued in life, from running to motorcycling to sex, while burdening him down with dead weight equivalent to hundreds of pounds, which make the simplest action, like getting out of a car, take minutes or hours, radically shortening his effective days. He is an ambulatory corpse, “two arms and a head”. Atreus discusses in detail the existential horror of his condition, from complete lack of bowel control requiring him to constantly dig his own feces out of his anus to being trapped in a wheelchair larger than a washing machine to the cruelty of well-intentioned encouragement to social alienation and his constant agonized awareness of everything he has lost. If the first question of philosophy is whether to commit suicide, Atreus finds that for him, the answer is “yes”. The paper/book concludes with his description of stabbing himself and slowly bleeding to death.]
This book is born of pain. I wrote it out of compulsion during the most hellish time of my life. Writing it hurt me and was at times extremely unpleasant. Is the book my death-rattle or the sound of me screaming inside of my cage? Does its tone tell you I am angry or merely seeking a psychological expedient against the madness I see around me? The book is my creation but is also in many ways foreign to me for I am living in a foreign land. Most generally perhaps it is just the thoughts that passed through my head over the twenty months I spent moving toward death. I am certainly not a man who is at peace with his life, but on the contrary I despise it as I have never before despised anything. Who can sort it all out? Being imprisoned in the nightmarish cage of paraplegia has done all manner of violence to the deepest parts of me. Still, I have not gone mad. I am no literary genius and don’t expect everything I say to be understood, but if you would like to know what my experiences have been like, and what I am like, I will try my best to show you.
What do I think of this book? I have no affection for it. I find it odious and unattractive and am very saddened that I wrote it. But it is what I had to say. It took on a life of its own and when I now step back and look at what I created I regard it with distaste. If I could, I would put all of these horrible thoughts in a box, seal it forever, then go out and live life. I would run in the sun, enjoy my freedom, and revel in myself. But that’s the point. I cannot go out and live life because this is not life. So instead I speak to you from the place I now occupy, between life and death.
…Imagine a man cut off a few inches below the armpits. Neglect for a moment questions concerning how he eliminates waste and so forth, and just assume that the site of the “amputation” is, to borrow from Gogol, “as uniform as a newly fried pancake”. This man would be vastly, immensely better off than me. If you don’t know who Johnny Eck is, he had a role in the 1932 movie Freaks. He was the guy who was essentially a torso with arms. He walked on his hands. How fortunate he was compared to me may not register right away, because the illusion I mentioned above would probably make you find Johnny Eck’s condition far more shocking than mine. But the truth is that mine is much more horrible than his, barring whatever social “advantages” the illusion of being whole might confer on me. The other day I saw a picture of a woman missing both legs. They were cut off mid-thigh. I thought that if only I was like her perhaps my life would be bearable. She was, in my opinion, better off than the pancake man, who is beyond any doubt far better off than me. One man said to me, “At least you didn’t lose your legs.” No, I did lose my legs, and my penis, and my pelvis. Let’s get something very clear about the difference between paraplegics and double-leg amputees. If tomorrow every paraplegic woke up as a double-leg amputee, the Earth itself would quiver with ecstasy from the collective bursting forth of joyous emotion. Tears of the most exquisitely overwhelming relief and happiness would stream down the cheeks of former paraplegics the world over. My wording here is deliberate. It’s no exaggeration. Losing both legs is bad, but paraplegia is ghoulishly, nightmarishly worse.
Part of what I wanted in desiring to die in the company of those I loved was to reassure them and perhaps give them courage to face death well. That was something I really wanted to give to them and I’m sorry I can only do it with these words. I was driven almost mad by all of the things many other people said about paraplegia, suicide, and what was still possible in my condition. I hope everyone understands how all of that affected the tone of what I wrote. I was so frustrated with all of it, I thought it was so insane. But I only wanted to break free of it all and say what I felt. I felt like it stifled me so horribly.
I cut some more and the blood is flowing well again. I’m surprised how long it is taking me to even feel anything. I thought I was dizzy but I’m not sure I am now. It’s 8:51 pm. I thought I would get cold but I’m not cold either, I’m actually hot but that’s probably the two sweaters. Starting to feel a little badly. Sweating, a little light-headed.
I’m going to go now, done writing. Goodbye everyone.