I see what we have here is failure to communicate.
I meant to cover a lot of ground with this thread. But I realize that speaking in generalities isn't getting anywhere. So, perhaps a different tack is needed.
Let's use a real-life example. In June of 2007, professional wrestling champion Chris Benoit killed his wife Nancy and their 7-y/o son Daniel, then hanged himself. To this day, what caused Benoit to go berserk is the subject of many different theories. But a common thread that runs through all of them is that whatever it was, it had been brewing for sometime.
To all outward appearances, Benoit was a great guy, a man totally devoted to his son. In an industry marked by outlandish, over-the-top personalities, wild partying and little moral integrity, Benoit was quiet, hardworking, almost selfless. He was unfailingly polite to veterans, even when they treated him like garbage.
But Benoit had a dark side. Only recently have people come forward to say that, in hindsight, they should have known that Benoit was not healthy upstairs. He was obsessed with wrestling, unable to live without it. He was fixated on following in the footsteps of his childhood idol, "Dynamite Kid" Tom Billington. He was implicated in many incidents of hazing younger wrestlers. He was known to be be cruel to rookies who he felt had violated the etiquette of the business. He became known for his habit of mentally disappearing in the middle of conversations and becoming distant with friends.
With this in mind, the question becomes: if it was so obvious that Benoit had a screw loose, why was nothing done about it? Why didn't anyone spot the warning signs?
Well, that's my point here. How many times have we seen it where it should have been obvious that something was terribly wrong with someone, but no one spotted the signals in time? Too many to count.
Let's compare Benoit to PR, loathe as I am to do that. So let's limit ourselves to specifics. What possibilities could there have been for a sufficient breakdown to reach the kind of level that Tadpole12 refers to.
**Benoit lived in almost constant pain due to injuries suffered from his profession, most notably severe spinal damage. The effect of unremitting pain can have a severe effect on a healthy person's psyche. He used large amounts of painkillers to compensate, which sped up his physical degeneration.
Ah, now we come to a crucial area. Having lost both parents to cancer, a disease which eventually claimed PR's life, I am all too aware the damaging effects of that kind of pain can have on the mental and emotional state of an otherwise healthy person. Add to that the effects of the treatments. Both took large amounts of pain medication. PR most likely did too.
It was suggested early on that the combination of physical pain, emotional torment over an uncertain future and the combination of treatments and medication could have seriously damaged PR's mind. I believe it. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. Twice. To all of you out there who are reading this who have never experienced the sheer torment of watching someone die in slow-motion like that, believe me when I say that I pray you never do. You don't ever want to know.
If these drugs were combined with alcohol, the results would be accelerated.
Moreover, as I said, Benoit was obsessed with wrestling from an early age, It became his whole life, and contributed to his death. Well, PR seemed to be obsessed with JB's success as a pageant princess. If you ever watch those reality TV pieces about child beauty pageants, you'll often notice some pretty extreme behavior on the part of the parents, for various reasons. But it's generally agreed that PR's level was serious even by those standards. This was far more than "a few Sunday afternoons." We're talking a lot of hours and thousands of dollars here. Singing lessons, dancing lessons, acting lessons, modeling lessons, and those ever-more elaborate costumes, culminating with the famous "peacock showgirl" oufit we all know which shocked even veterans of the child beauty pageant circuit.
PR herself came from a family of beauty pageant contestants. She and her sisters were groomed for it from a young age by their mother. PR's obsession was seemingly a second-generation fixation.
I often wonder about Nedra's role in this. She never struck me as a particularly warm, friendly mom. Rather, she seemed the type who would not tolerate anything less than the absolute best from her daughters, and that if you weren't the very best you could be, you were worthless. PR was an extremely driven woman, driven to succeed. She often did, but was it enough? Was it for her own satisfaction, or a plea for Mother's love? Did she see JB as a way for her to make up for her "failures" and finally win the love she may have felt her mother denied her? Is that why she had such a severe emotional stake in JB's success?
When a person's world is built on pillars, all it takes is the buckling of one support to send that person's world crashing in around them. It's no way to live, and it invites tragedy.
These are just some factors to consider.
So, the second part of the question is, if there were warning signs of some mental degeneration, why didn't anyone do anything? Well, any number of reasons, really. I'm sure many people wrote it off as the eccentricities of the nouveau riche. What would be "nuts" in a regular person is "quirky" in someone with vast werewithal. Ego is a big factor. Some people can't admit that they were wrong about people, or that they refused to listen to those nagging instincts. It's a long list. My point is, for a person to seek mental help, there has to be a clear realization that something is not right. But we don't always get that before tragedy strikes.
As a final note to this, I hate to seem ghoulish, and I will no doubt suffer the wrath of some for even suggesting such a thing, but I think PR should have been autopsied when she died. It would have been interesting to see what an examination of her brain would reveal, if anything.
