It’s not surprising to meet Dr C in the toilet. After all, he’s my neighbour at Lucky Plaza. What’s strange is that on that particular day, Dr C didn’t seem like he was using the toilet. He was leaning against a wall, facing the urinals and reading his newspaper.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Dr C.
He just smiled.
“Reading the papers?” I asked, almost in disbelief.
“Yes.” he replied.
“Eh … why?” I asked.
“Peace and quiet.” he replied.
I didn’t know what to say. After I’ve used the toilet, he was gone. I suspect that he left because he didn’t want any further questions from me.
I was a bit concerned at first. I know that Dr C has always been under a lot of stress. Over the years that we’ve been neighbours, we shared our stories. Being quite a number of years my senior, he often had good advice for me. I learned that he had been troubled by lawsuits a couple of times. He always insisted that being a Christian helped him cope with any problem. Meeting him in the toilet the other day made me realise that he probably wasn’t coping as well as he made it appear.
But on the other hand, it gave me some sense of relief. Many of us are capable of doing bizarre things when chronic stress gets the better of us. The macho people out there would like to believe that they are still in control, but very often, they’re just living in denial. Like the bite from a small Komodo dragon, the latter’s venom can gradually sap the strength of a water buffalo several times the dragon’s size. The dragon stalks the massive poisoned beast for days or even weeks until it finally collapses. The “snake” is really swallowing the “elephant”.
Many of us behave like proud and stubborn water buffaloes when toxic stress threatens to nibble at us at the heel. We ignore the signs. We don’t realise the magnitude of the damage it can cause. Given enough time, drops of water can erode a hole in a rock. The same applies to one’s mental health. Bit by bit, stress from all sorts of disharmony in our workplace or families can wreak havoc with our minds. A psychiatrist just told me that he has patients who are bankers caught shoplifting. And I’ve always thought that banking was a glamorous, sexy profession.
But we also need to understand that people like Dr C is still far from “crazy” in the “normal” sense of the word. At work, he is still a highly competent professional. Mozart and Beethoven, Hemingway and DH Lawrence wrote their best pieces when they were suffering from depression. It may not affect their work or passion. It’s just when people like Dr C are left alone, with nothing to work on, that stress clouds their minds, making them do bizarre things. He may have forgotten that he had gone all the way into the toilet to read his papers. And it was probably the sudden appearance of someone familiar that woke him up.
All this is painfully familiar. Mental illness or personality disorders may not be contagious, but many caregivers of psychiatric patients end up developing mental illness themselves. An earth-shattering example would be Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist in the US military who opened fire at his own men, killing 13 and injuring 30. What can we learn from all this? It’s about time we stop acting like supermen and start doing something about the toxic stress around us, be it from work or more likely, from family. A former classmate of mine once said: “The people who hurt most are the people closest to us.”
Having been Dr C‘s neighbour for nearly 6 years, I think I know the main source of his stress. We see people staying back in camp after reservist while others are rushing home. We see groups of uncles drinking beer at the kopitiams until everyone at home is asleep. We are not alone.
It’s a sad irony, but life is such that when we are finally cornered with no other choice, we must sometimes cut away a finger to save the hand.
