Free of parental curses Magda Davitt – Sinead O’Connor

Free of parental curses Magda Davitt
“I am in danger. I need a doctor, a psychiatrist. Immediately. Right now. Someone, answer me! I feel very, very bad. I’m really sick. I need the right medicine. I’m ready to go to Dublin from my Bray, without changing clothes. I, in fact know, that in my small town there are absolutely no doctors, capable to render the qualified help. Help, I ask you … “- this is what Sinead O’Connor wrote on Twitter on January 10, 2012. A quick response did not follow.
But once her name was on the list of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Admirers called her face an outstanding work of nature, and her voice – the voice of an angel.
And although Sinead became rich and famous, she gave birth to four children from different men, she did not get true happiness.

At eight-fifteen in the morning she was awakened by a phone call.
“Miss O’Connor?” This is Dr. Terence Larkin from St. John’s Hospital. Barry, Mr. Barry Herridge, your ex-husband and my good friend urged me to take you under my care. Are you ready for hospitalization?
“When?” Asked Sinead.
– Right now. I’ll send the car,” Larkin said.
“I need a psychiatrist, not a therapist,” Sinead muttered.
“Miss O’Connor, you probably did not hear about our place before, but … oh, it was founded back in 1882 … I’m a psychiatrist.” And I practice in St. John’s Hospital, in other words – in a psychiatric clinic.
“So Barry read my message on Twitter,” Sinead guessed.

Having thrown everything into the hiking bag, she sat down to the laptop and sent a farewell message to the twitter: “I’m going to the clinic for the mentally ill. In fact, it’s okay, just there was a doctor who promised to help me. So I will be absent for a few weeks, but I’ll definitely be back. I really hope that they will treat me and I want to live again … ”

After the divorce with her last husband she tried to commit suicide, swallowing a handful of Valium. But she survived. When she was 33, she had already tried to die, taking an increased dose of a mixture of heavy drugs, but even then she was rescued. Cause? Wild stress due to years of legal litigation with former lover John Waters, who eventually seized her custody rights over their daughter Roisin.

After the divorce from Barry Herridge, thanks to which she now sits in this office in the hope of getting qualified help, she did not want to live – to play music, sing, communicate, and breathe. Children? Where are they? She does not know how the 23-year-old Jake lives in distant London, as he does not call. Roisin moved to her father a long time ago. Although the baby Shane who is only four, lives in the house with Sinead, but spends all time with the governess.

To tell more in detail about the reasons of the conflict? It’s simple. Sinead is a bad mother. She has a bad temper. She also has a stupidly broken ankle, and she is interested in the fundamental question: if there a smoking room in the clinic.
Larkin nodded politely, summarizing the information in the narrow columns of the questionnaire. Throwing aside the patient’s quick glances, he tried not to tear himself away from the screen of the monitor. Strange feelings. He remembered Sinead when, about ten years ago, he saw the clip of Nothing Compares 2U – its main and remaining single hit. Rare in beauty face, huge sad eyes, and voice … crystal, strong, clean. It was impossible not to fall in love with her …

Now in the office before Larkin was a completely different woman, not even remotely resembling the Sinead, which he then saw. Plump, swollen, with ugly tattoos, cheeky, with narrow eyes. Trials stole her beauty.

An experienced therapist had no difficulty in making the diagnosis – no, Miss O’Connor is not crazy. Spoiled personal life, broken emotional ties with children, once beloved men, lingering loneliness, creative failures, marijuana and psychotropic drugs. All this led her to a state of deep despair, but certainly not to insanity.

… It all started in August 2011, at the end of the next summer, held in Bray, in an empty house. Perhaps, it is this date that can be considered the starting point for subsequent sad events. After a divorce from her third husband, Australian guitarist Steve Cooney, Sinead bought a house in Bray and settled there with her young sons Shane and Yeshua in the hope of starting everything from scratch. But it was impossible to compose music in pauses between cooking porridge and walking “in the open air”, and this irritated her. She nervously treated the boys, constantly bursting into screams.

In addition, the new antidepressants prescribed by the doctor, caused side effects – absent-mindedness and increased drowsiness. She could suddenly fall asleep at the wheel of a car in a long traffic jam or on a bench in a city park, while Shane rushed around unattended, and Yeshua crawled toward the roadway. Sinead constantly dropped dishes, and the boys regularly injured their feet. Once, leaving her sons, she went out for food and … lost. Found only in the late evening – she was sleeping at the foot of the Bray Head hill. Alarmed by the hour-long crying of hungry, frightened children, neighbors called the police.
That same evening, she repented on the Internet: “Gnawed from the inside by a terrible melancholy, everything is falling from my hands. I can not write, can not be a good mother, scream and scoff at my sons, bringing them to tears… .”

When the content of this confession caught the eye of Shane’s father, musician and producer Donal Lanni, he alerted social services. As a result, the second son was taken away for a while, until Sinead did not find a professional governess, ready to constantly look after the child.

That summer, Sinead was seriously planning to write memoirs to get rid of the devils that had accumulated in her soul. Yes, and the familiar journalist Peter Adder found the idea quite good, even promised to negotiate with the publisher. Sinead suffered a week, but it was enough for only one page:
“I’m not sure that I ever really loved someone. My parents divorced when I was barely eight. I was the third child of five. At first we lived with Mother Mary, but she always beat us, and I ran away to my father and his new wife. But even there it was bad for me. My father has his own life, and I have nothing to do with it. I ran around the yards, fought, stealing food in the shops… and was caught.

One day my father sent me to the Catholic boarding school “Magdalene’s Shelter” … and then music began. And a meeting with the teacher Joseph Felvi, who first noticed my gift. He asked to try, learn to sing … I sang in the choir and solo. I remember how my sisters cried when they listened to me. Many cried. And teacher Felvi too. So did I.

It was a real reward. Salvation. The voice promised me a new life, a whole new life. Opportunity to become another. Bright. New. Such as I did not even dare to imagine myself! I always thought – why was born, who needs it, what should I do in this life without a family, among strangers, indifferent people? I had no friends. Not interested in anything I could not do anything. I was nobody. And the voice could give me the whole world!

After leaving the boarding school, I learned that much in my absence had changed – my mother died in a car crash. It hurt, despite the fact that we never had connection. And my father again changed his wife and moved long ago, I did not want to look for his new address. I told myself: I’m all alone and will survive alone. The music pulled me out of the darkness. I sang, and I earned a lot of money for this. And then there were men. A lot of men. For one night, a month, or even a couple of years. Sometimes one of them became a husband, but the marriage lasted for months. They always left, leaving children, with whom I could not handle, and whom I loved badly.

Marijuana is my faithful friend, I also can not do without pills that help one out of ten just to fall asleep. By and large, I consider myself a failure. My dream? It’s simple – I would like to teach singing lessons in schools. Or, maybe, go to the monastery, forget about what I once was. It seems to me that all my stupidities are explained simply – I do not need anyone. ”

“It sucks!” – concluded Peter. The public does not need this. And where is the details of your affair with Anthony Kiddis from the band Red Hot Chili Peppers? Where are the naughty nuances of your three starry husbands: the musician John Reynolds, the scandalous journalist Nicholas Sommerland and guitarist Steve Cuny. And your lover Frank Bonadio, from whom you gave birth to Yeshua? And affair with Peter Gabriel?
Why Sinead did not tell how she tore off the photo of John Paul II on Saturday Night live, how she played Ophelia in Hamlet in a theatrical production of a little-known Irish troupe. And how she secretly received the priesthood and the name of Suor Bernadette?

Make it clear: no one needs to know what is bad for you. Cynical Peter buried the idea of ​​memoirs.

And then Sined suddenly got carried away with keeping an intimate diary on-line, she began to frankly – first on her website, and then on Twitter. “Hey, somebody! Answer me! I need a kind person, affectionate and meek. Otherwise, he will not tolerate my difficult character. He must have work, because I hate lazy people. And a dream. I also like romance.”

Fans of Sinead, as well as journalists perceived the message as a dubious joke, but still laughed. However, a few days later her first and only letter from a certain Barry Herridge came to her. Mr. pediatrician looked like a typical mama’s son: in neat clothes, with an old-fashioned hairdo, high eyebrows and a strange smile. Nevertheless, she immediately agreed to a meeting that they appointed in a neutral territory, in Dublin, in the pub. Exactly at six in the evening on the threshold of the bar appeared a slender young man in a long tweed coat and an absurd broad-brimmed hat.

“I did not believe to the last that you were serious.”
– Seriously, what? Asked Sinead.
“Well, look for a man.” And here I am, with you. And you seem to me even more beautiful than you were before …
“Why did you decide that we would get along?” She repeated incredulously.
Barry again spread his mouth in a smile:
– It’s simple. We’re both grown-up single people. I speak as a doctor: the best medicine for us is to go to bed immediately. Sinead whistled. His openness bribed.
Barry didn’t allow Sinead to pay for dinner and suggested immediately to go to the hotel, which, in fact, she did not resist at all.

She soon discovered that Barry, a pediatrician by profession (specializing in the therapy of complex children, former drug addicts), and treated her like a child in need of help. Perhaps, this is what she always so lacked in the relationship with men. Barry categorically did not like her enthusiasm for marijuana, and he warned that in the very near future he would seriously take care of her treatment.

While Barry was at work, Sinead sent enthusiastic reviews about him to Twitter:
“To love again! Laugh again! To wake up on the shoulder of a man, to whom I am not indifferent! ”
“Rejoice for Sinead! I think she fell in love! ”

December 9, 2011 in the famous church Little White Chappel held a solemn wedding. Sinead, in a pink dress, thin and prettier, as if she was younger. Even tattoos and haircuts didn’t spoil her look. To his strict classical costume Barry added a cheerful touch, choosing a shirt of exactly the same color as the wedding dress of Sinead. That’s how happy they were and photographed by the Daily Mail immediately after the ceremony. Then the newlyweds sat in a pink Cadillac, on which, according to local urban legends, Elvis Presley himself once drove around, and went to the hotel.

In less than two days, the idyll gave a serious crack. It turned out that until recently Barry hid his connection with Sinead from the family. And he told his mother about the upcoming wedding just on the eve of his flight to Las Vegas.
– Idiot! Full idiot! She said. “Do not you know who you contacted?” It’s a whore, a dirty girl, a mother with many children, a drug addict! All newspapers write about this! I thought you were kidding me! Do you want adventure? Wait, you will receive from her in full!

Every evening, Barry received from her envelopes with photocopies of tabloid newspapers and magazines, which told scabrous stories about the past of Sinead. Moreover, even started to call Sinead, while her son was at work. And if she did not answer the phone, she left on the answering machine messages: “Leave my boy alone, shit. For you – all are the same – he, or any other man!”

Meanwhile, between the spouses, hassles began due to the fact that Sinead refused to quit smoking. Moreover, somehow she even tried to shove a cigarette with marijuana into Barry’s mouth, for which she received a slap in the face.
“You do not understand, I’m a doctor!” And every day I see children who have been through it, “he shouted. But Sinead laughed: “It’s quite innocuous thing. A trifle, a bad habit”.

Tenderness, which both experienced to each other in the early days, evaporated like smoke …
She wrote on Twitter: “I suddenly realized sharply that if he stays with me – I will ruin his life. His relatives hate me, and for his mother I am a descendant of hell. ”

And now Sinead sticks out here, in the hospital of St. John. All are king to Sinead. In addition, there is a library where you can disappear for hours, sit and read, sitting in a cozy leather chair.

Every day Dr. Larkin leads with her soul-saving conversations on a variety of topics. A naive man! He thinks that this way he cures her. But both Sinead and Dr. Larkin have a very serious opponent, whom both, even if they really want, can not prevail. Past. And to get rid of the past, in 2017, wishing to be “free of parental curses” she changed her name to Magda Davitt.

“Sinead O’Connor is no more. This person is no more. The name I chose is fine, and it suits me a lot more. Those who love me will call me Magda. Those who continue to call me Sinead – uneducated fools, “- explained Magda in an interview.

Free of parental curses Magda Davitt

Based on the article in the magazine “Caravan of stories” 2/2013