The film centers on a thirty year-old woman who has dissociative identity disorder. SPOILER ALERT: she puts herself in incredibly dangerous situations. Her personalities are aware of each other. She does not believe she can ever live without suffering at the hands of the various personalities and their individual harmful ways; they are all that has been consistent in her life, and she is not willing to lose that consistency through "integration." She wants to end her suffering, and her helplessness at being at the mercy of the unmerciful actions of the personalities, and she asks her boyfriend for his approval. She wants to know if he loves her enough to let her end her suffering, but she does not ask him to actually participate. She has stated that she believes her condition is permanent; she sees no way out other than suicide. He has exhibited signs of a savior complex throughout the film, but tells her he must leave, and may be gone for a long time. This is his permission and approval, and a step in his personal evolution. This is the point in the film at which the discussions among my friends became passionate.
One of my friends posited that nobody has "the right" to "allow" another to commit suicide. I argued that close friends, family, and lovers not only have that right, but are actually required to help a friend in this kind of need end his or her suffering. I will say here that I have no religious affiliations forbidding this approach. I believe that we each own our bodies, and our lives, and if we decide that our suffering has become unendurable, we have the right to end those lives. This idea has been a source of comfort to me throughout my life. Knowing that I do not *have* to live makes it easier to *choose* to do so. I do not believe suicide is a decision to be taken lightly, and a recognition of impermanence can prevent permanent solutions to fleeting problems, but I also understand the feeling that life has been a series of waves of pain, each building cumulatively into the next, with small periods of relief. When life feels like that, and seems to be an unending, increasing wave of pain, I understand the desire to end it. I've never heard an argument that made me believe that euthanasia can never be merciful.
Somebody once pointed out to me that when his dog became old, demented, and helpless, he was legally able to end that dog's misery. But, when his wife, after over 40 years of marriage became demented and helpless, when she reached a depth of misery at which she ceased to wish to live, a point at which he knew that he also would not want to live, he could do nothing but watch her slowly deteriorate.
Hypothetical scenario: Your mother has been diagnosed with a terminal illness at an unusually early age. She has many moments of clarity in the early days after the diagnosis, and tells you how terrified she is, that she understands what is in her future and she DOES NOT WANT IT. She knows there is terrible suffering ahead of her, that she will become so demented that she has no idea what is happening to her, who you are, who your brother is, who she is. This illness will kill her, slowly. There is no cure, and the only ways to ease it also slow it. She will lose the ability to walk, to talk, to think. Her essence will leave her mind and body years before that body's pulse stops. She wants to die before that happens. She would kill herself now, if she knew a way, but she can't hold onto an idea long enough to execute it (and herself). Before she goes to bed that night, she screams that she wants to die, repeatedly. You do not want her to suffer as she is now, and this is nothing compared to what is in store for her. You think of the book, "Still Alice," in which Alice set a plan for her own suicide on her computer ahead of time. There are indicators for which she is to check every day, and when she finds them, she is to follow the instructions she wrote for herself in her more aware, healthy days. Only, when the indicators are all there, she is incapable of focusing long enough to follow the steps to end her life, which is about to become unconscious and unwanted.
As if this weren't enough, you are also aware that this illness is hereditary. You have a 50% chance of inheriting it, and if you do, you will most likely be helpless, mute, immobile, demented within twenty years. Are your true friends the ones who tell you not to worry about it, who won't help you avoid years of empty suffering when that time comes (and that time is not now; you know you have the potential for several years of consciousness in front of you...you want to make the most of all that time, to squeeze every moment of connection and pleasure out of all those moments), or the ones who agree to help you exit peacefully when your quality of life ceases to exist? If you really love somebody, do you refuse to help that person die, even though it is their strongest desire, or do you help him or her liberate himself or herself, "discorporate"? Do you leave Alice there, living out her greatest fears, or do you show her the pills she stored away for this very moment? Which is the greatest gift of love, your selfish clinging to an idea of a person who is already gone, or your helping that person die with the integrity with which she lived?
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