News reports today say that Susan Boyle, the "Britain's Got Talent" big-hitter, has been hospitalized in England with a "nervous breakdown."
Just between us girls, I would be surprised if she did NOT have a difficult time handling her sudden world-wide fame. Kids, her instant, world-wide celebrity is not like having your picture published in the local paper because you saved somebody from a burning car, or halted a robbery in progress or something.
I mean, only a cave-dweller could have avoided seeing her story, and becoming intrigued by her.
As I thought about this, my mind could only think about my four sons when they were newborn. They had been 9 months in the womb...the safety, the assurance, the sameness, the anonymity, and the comfort of Momma's heartbeat.
Then WHAM! Bright lights...you know, the world as they had known it was no more. Everything had changed. And it had changed for them forever. If you've seen a newborn away from Momma, you will understand the near frantic cries that they can bellow...the shaking, and fretting...it looks, and sounds like a "nervous breakdown."
Often, everyone wants a piece of them. Everybody wants to hold the cute little addition. But more often than not, the baby just wants Momma. And often, Momma is the only one that can put an end to the impending "breakdown."
I see Susan Boyle like that. For 47 years she was in a womb. Her small village, her family, her friends and neighbors, her church, her home, etc. provided a "womb-like" safety that I'm sure very few of us can understand.
Then WHAM! Everybody wants a piece of you. Everybody is your friend. Everybody tells you how wonderful, and charming, and talented you are. The trust of "sameness" is gone. Suspicion of the motives of others arises. Emotions, and uncertainties that you've not experienced in your 47 years in the womb arise...and I'm sure SCARE THE BEJEEBERS out of you.
47 years in the womb is a long time. I know that even most of us that have a more typical life experience than Susan does, get pretty well "set in our ways" by her age, or younger.
Will Susan pull it together, and be able to move on from "Momma?" I sure hope so. It would be a shame for a fairy tale to end "and she lived miserably ever after."
Monday, June 1, 2009
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I think she really thought that she would win and can't cope with the disappointment.
ReplyDeleteDunno Patrick...From news reports, her "breakdown" began days before the final competition.
ReplyDeleteI am not a psychologist/psychiatrist, nor do I play one on the internet...but I know that there are individuals with an inherent "fear of success."
Regardless of whether she won or lost, she will never be "more famous" than she is right now. She will NEVER have more attention focused on her by the public.
I truly believe that the complete unfamiliarity with it all drove her crazy (for lack of a better term), at least temporarily. I think it would do the same to me.
A right-thinking person would not care whether she won, or lost. The FAME is there regardless, ready to be taken advantage of. That's why I believe that she was not "thinking right" well before her loss.
Like I said...when I see her, I think of my newborn sons...plunged into an unfamiliar world with only a womb to remember.
You're right. The contrast between the "womb" in which she lived in Scotland and London is bad enough but then she had to deal with the phony showbiz world too.
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