.,..,.. -¢.. .‘ - ‘,-.,,., 1‘... , _T' lren Smolarski .,..x- .4 ... J . Va‘, . w- . H‘. :v' _1. ii. ‘.1-» 7, 7 I ? 24 — OUT IN THE IV\ouNTA:Ns —— MAY 1993 Associates in Recovery Janet K. Brown, M.A., C;A.D.C. ucsmssso PSYCHOLOGIST _ MASTER CERTIFIED ALCOHOL AND onus coumsnorz Jean Townsend, M.A., L.C.M.H.C. UCENSED CLINICAL MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELOR Burlington. Vermont (802) 863-8162 Milton, Vermont (802) 893-4836 Healing Bodywork § - Swedish - Reflexology - Polarity - Reiki Master Flevel with abandonment to a truly great massage rarely found anywhere. And be your best again. Prince Jhorev (802) 785-2244 658-8401 MA Psych.; Ph.D. Lit. Toward Intimacy Group for LGBT now forming Fee based on 4 Individual & Couples ‘ Individual Means Psychotherapy My neighbor Tracy took his own life last month. He took it back from AIDS, he took it back from his doctors, he took responsibility for his own soul and took himself out of pain. \ I liked Tracy a lot. He had a sort of manful gentility of spirit. He was smart and well- spoken, b u t deeply ta n g l e d in depres- sion. Everyone in the Vermont CARES House is grieved that he's gone, but I don't think anyone is truly shocked. One reason for this was Tracy's im- mense sadness. He kept it neatly bottled up most of the time, but it moved under the surface of his skin, in the depths of his eyes, in the way he carried himself. It was his generally recognized attribute, no less real than the mustache on his face. Another reason for the low key of our reactions to his suicide is simply that we, as people living with AIDS, have all developed strong psycho- logical mechanisms which are specifically designed to accept death as a real and aggressive possibility in our worlds. We scurry like rabbits to evade it, but when it strikes near, we are not surprised. Having HIV gives me a certain authority to speak in the death department. I have a lethal disease. I've thought a lot about it and re- cently I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions. I've been around the block enough times. to know that there waslnoth- ing I could have done to pre- vent Tracy's death." Maybe I could have gotten to know him better, maybe I could. have checked in on himuevery day, A maybe I could havebecomehis best friend. But I couldn't have restored his wasted constitu- tion, I couldn't have made the drugs he was tak- ing any more ef- fective or their side-effects any less debilitating. I couldn't have wiped out the hard years he had spent fight- ing the enemies in his body and in his mind. Would I have stopped him from taking his life if I'd been given the opportunity? Yes and no. If he had asked me to talk him out of it, I would have bent all my energies to the task of convincing him not to. But then, the act of asking for help would have shown me that some part of him wanted to hang on. All the residents of this house have made the de- cision to resist this disease and as long as some part of him still believed in ‘that resolve, I would have tried like hell, like anyone here, to help him hang on to it. But I don't buy into the Western medical notion of pre- serving life at any cost. Ulti- mately, deciding whether or not it is worth it to live is a pri- mary right that belongs to the individual. Having HIV makes this painfully clear. I have said before that privacy and au- tonomy are the first casualties of HIV,» and that their loss is grievous. Ihave also said that people living with HIV are guinea pigs. But there is a cru- cial difference that separates us from the lab rats. We_can with- draw from the experiment. We have the right to say"’this isn't worth it to me.” We accept all kinds of intrusions into our lives as a result of this disease, but that fundamental core of autonomy, that kernel of self, is precious. It must be pre- served —~ at any cost. So if I imagine a situa- tion in which I perceived Tracy's intention and he ex- plained to me that he really didn't want to live anymore, out of respect for him, out of respect for his integrity, I would not have stopped him from achieving his aim. If someone’s pain is that great, forcing him to endure it against his will is cruel and inhuman. Having a right to life implies having a right to death, having a right to liberty means liberty to make the most radical decisions. And if to pursue happiness meant that Tracy had to chase it right out of this world, the chase was his. I hope with all my heart that he's found it. I was fortunate to know Tracy for the brief time that I did. There was nothing cow- ardly in his suicide, nothing shameful in his decision to die. He has brought home an essential truth of experience, but one that is nevertheless hard to accept: our lives be- long to us. We must each find- our own balance between »_ pain in the moment and faith in the future. 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