Erin Lee Carr’s “I Love You, Now Die” peels back the many layers of the Michelle Carter Case.

This month, HBO premiered Erin Lee Carr’s  I Love You, Now Die. The two-part documentary chronicles the 2014 suicide of eighteen-year-old Conrad Roy, who was coaxed to take his life through text messages by his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Michelle Carter. Carr, who is known for exploring the concept of radical empathy in her work, gives us a thought-provoking, even-handed look into the complex nature of this story.  Both the film and this precedent-setting case raise several important questions, such as; How is technology both beneficial and detrimental to the mentally ill? Are we doing all we can as a society for mental illness and suicide prevention? Why did the legal system and media not treat this case with more compassion? Is the further trauma of imprisonment rehabilitative to Michelle Carter? Is Michelle Carter herself rehabilitative?  And finally; Can one human kill another using just words?

In watching this piece, we are given an intimate look into a devastating outcome for two families that encapsulates the messiness of being human. The Carters seek mercy, and the Roys; justice. These polarized incentives have the same ultimate goal, both sides want a resolution to their suffering. No one wins here, nor are there any heroes or villains, but there are truths in this story we can no longer deny. The first one being; there is a dire need for better mental healthcare and awareness in our schools, but the funding is unavailable. Catastrophic events like this are becoming a pattern, yet each one is met with disbelief. Fourteen-year-old Phillip Chism raped and murdered his teacher, Colleen Ritzer, who was only twenty-four in 2013. School shootings are rampant as is campus sexual assault. Bullying has evolved past cruel hallway taunts and is now immortalized on the internet where shame is felt on a public scale. The antiquated notion that youth is the best days of our lives is no longer serving anyone, and we are left with an uncomfortable reality to digest. Our children are suffering and need help.  

 Michelle Carter was initially booked on reckless conduct and wanton, but charged with and eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.  In spite of the fact that Massachusetts is one of the eleven states which does not have a law against suicidal coercion via text message, Michelle is currently serving a fifteen-month sentence in a maximum-security prison. To warrant an Involuntary Manslaughter charge, she would have had to be the sole cause of Conrad’s death. There is undeniable due cause to hold Michelle accountable for her unsound and immoral actions, in addition to concern for her capability to be a safe, functioning member of society. But given the age and mental illness history of both parties, is she a cold-blooded killer beyond a reasonable doubt?
Conrad Roy died on July 12, 2014, of carbon monoxide poisoning. Prior to this incident, he had attempted suicide four times, including an overdose on acetaminophen that nearly required a liver transplant. A female friend he had met in a support group called the paramedics for him. Roy had previously been admitted to psychiatric facilities to address his mental health issues and was seeing a therapist. Nonetheless, he was adamant in his desire to end his life. He regularly texted graphic suicide images to Carter and stated if she told anyone how he was feeling, their relationship would be over.  Initially, she tried to counsel him to receive help and not follow through with this. It was only in the few months before his death Michelle became supportive of the idea. On one occasion, he stated his mother, Lynn Roy, knew of his suicidal plans. That she had seen he was exploring ways to kill himself on the internet and didn’t bring attention to it, which he interpreted as a sign of supporting him in his wish to die.

Roy had also documented his struggles in a series of video diaries.  In one particular clip, he says he has good parents but pauses to describe his father, Conrad Roy Sr., as being good “most of the time”. We later find out that the two had a turbulent relationship and Conrad was the recipient of physical discipline as a consequence. One beating was so severe it resulted in a call to law enforcement and an assault charge against Conrad Sr., which is detailed in graphic police photos. When asked about this on camera, he apathetically says he knows what happened that night, and it is no different than how his father would have responded to him had he of lashed out in a similar way. That as a parent, he feels his reaction was appropriate. 

In this example of cyclic behavior, there is so much to not only observe but ask ourselves. When a developing eighteen-year-old mind bears witness to a pattern, what does it process beyond that? Are behaviors from the generation in which toxic masculinity included mental healthcare being a taboo sign of weakness pure vitriol? The intention is irrelevant to a recipient of abuse, but we also should note this physical trauma was occurring for someone battling a mental illness which physiologically inhibited his capacity for hindsight. 

The emotional component between the father and son pair was not lacking, as displayed by the tears Conrad Sr. sheds when reminiscing about the bullying his son faced in school by his peers. There is a palpable heartache in his facial expression and tone of voice as he talks about it. We also see him console his daughters in the courtroom with the ability only a parent possesses. While I, in no way condone violence in any capacity, exploring the duality of this relationship carefully illustrates the complicated nature of abuse and asks us to evaluate how it has become the epidemic it currently is.  

Michelle Carter’s mental health history was similar and something the pair bonded over. She too required inpatient stays at psychiatric facilities and had been diagnosed with bulimia at the age of ten. To suffer from an eating disorder that young leads me to believe Michelle felt a loss of control she had an inability to articulate and cope with. Could she have been acting out due to a childhood trauma we don’t know about?

 
By fourteen, she was prescribed Prozac, and in the months closer to Conrad’s death, Paxil. Roy was also on Celexa at the time. Both of these anti-depressants have been found to increase suicide ideation in patients under the age of twenty-four, as the brain does not complete frontal lobe development until twenty-five. The frontal lobe governs crucial life skills such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, and judgment. It is, in essence, the circuit board for our personalities. 

 
Not much is known about Carter’s home life as she and her family declined to participate in the making of the film. What we do know, is Michelle’s struggles were made evident in her strained peer relationships. Samantha Boardman, Olivia Masalgo, and Lexie Eblan all testified they found it difficult to establish a genuine friendship with Michelle. They found her to be incessantly demanding of attention and unstable. While these statements are made by the girls, the camera pans to Michelle looking confused, as if this is all news to her.

One set of text messages highlights a conversation where Carter is frantic over having eaten pasta, and tells Samantha Boardman she will need to hide a knife in her home because of it. She also confided in the girls about her sexual relationship with Conrad, but was inconsistent on the details of it being consensual or not. Much was made in the media of Michelle texting Conrad to get back in the truck in the midst of his suicide. In reality, there was no evidence of her explicitly saying this to Conrad, but only of her telling Samantha she made this statement. These are just a few examples of Carter’s fluctuating perspectives. 

Another relationship discussed in the film is between Michelle and a friend named Alice. Michelle believed their connection to be romantic in nature, but her feelings were not reciprocated. Her constant insinuation escalated to a degree where Alice’s mother felt a need to sever communication between the two. When Alice was requested to be interviewed for the documentary, she declined. In an off the record meeting with Esquire journalist Jesse Barron, it was however, made unequivocally clear that she and Carter never interacted on more than a platonic level. 

 
Further compulsive behaviors from Michelle include an intense fascination with the television musical program “Glee”. Specifically, the romantic storyline of characters Finn Hudson and Rachel Berry, portrayed by real-life couple Cory Monteith and Lea Michelle. Carter connected with this so deeply she would often quote both Lea’s and Rachel’s words as her own in numerous interactions.

 
Sadly, Monteith passed away in 2013 of an overdose after a long battle with addiction. His untimely death was written into the show where several musical numbers of pop songs were performed. Artistically paying tribute to someone’s life is an unquestionably beautiful way to celebrate them and the creators did so in a way that suited the tone of the show. But, I feel that due to the sensitive nature of the topic, it was an unintentional glamorization of a larger issue at hand. Specifically when the show refused to give the cause of Finn’s death, stating that how someone dies is only a few minutes in comparison to an entire life that they lived. There is truth to that, but how does this resonate with a young girl who displayed a lack of understanding severity and exhibited dissociative tendencies? 

Both Michelle and Conrad’s attempts to establish a connection, though dark and extreme in nature, shows a desire for love and attention but an inability to sustain it.  How do we model healthy determination of character judgment in virtual interaction where there is no way to determine the tone of voice or body language? Though virtual interactions seem to be the modern method of relationship building, how do we work around this? These skills are crucial in socialization, especially in an age group that is learning how to express themselves appropriately and build trust.  Before we can speak and understand language, facial expressions, touch, and vocal intonation are how we relate to the world in which we live. It’s ingrained in us to need these things for reassurance and the most universal way to make contact. Technology leaves these essential cues to the imagination and we are left to fill in the blanks. While this is irrelevant to understanding the difference between right and wrong, where do these missing notes lead the dissociative and under socialized imagination to wander? 

Americans are currently suffering from an epidemic known as “skin hunger”; where the lack of human touch is impacting them physiologically and causing depression. In a text message, we are given the ability to edit and calculate every response we give.  This constant dress rehearsal is inevitably going to affect our security in delivering a live, unfiltered performance. Especially when that is magnified by the human behavior of “compare and despair”, which is done against a digitally modified version of other people. No one memorializes their last mistake on Instagram. Screens provide us with a veil of anonymity that enables us to bear our souls while synonymously freeing and imprisoning us. 
Michelle and Conrad were the prime examples of a relationship in the digital era. Over the two year courtship, they had only interacted in person five times, despite living only forty minutes apart. Conrad was always the one to initiate and inquire about face to face meetings, but it was Michelle who persistently sought reassurance from Conrad that they were in love and exclusive. Would pairing eye contact and vocal context impinge insecurity upon sharing the demons that united them? There’s an added layer of vulnerability behind our confessions when they’re echoed in our own voice. Carter and Roy had dark exchanges about seeing and speaking with the devil, and compared themselves to Romeo and Juliet, romanticizing the fictitious couple’s demise. The discretion of the relationship was a key component to it. How does a parent help navigate what they do not have access to?  

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis with suicide being the tenth leading cause of death in America; affecting between 30 to 59 percent of all people per state. The requests for mental healthcare are at an all-time high with more awareness being given to the psychological well being equally as important as physical wellbeing, but we still have a supply and demand issue. The cost of care is unaffordable for many people, and they have to make an unfair choice between counseling and daily necessities. Low-income Americans are less likely to know where to go for adequate care, and tend to go to community centers as opposed to qualified facilities and doctors. These are more than half of the people seeking treatment. 

 
The media’s good versus evil narrative of this case only perpetuated the stigma around seeking help. It triggered our cultural obsession with blame, fault, and consequence, which are objectives meant to keep us safe. They also engage us to discuss the “why”, which gives us a sense of order in a powerless situation. But when it comes to the unfathomable heartache of grief, the “why” is only a temporary fix that delays the healing process needed to accept what is. By portraying Michelle as a Black Widow-esque caricature who preyed upon an innocent and naïve young Conrad who was lured and blinded by puppy love, we reduce them to categorical targets. We do a great disservice to the important conversations we need to have so we don’t hear as many stories like this one.  They, and everyone who struggles with mental illness, deserve to be looked at and treated as the individuals they are.

 
There are no simple answers or quick fixes to the many issues this film addresses. But, my biggest takeaway from it was this; language is the most powerful tool we have. Each one of us has an ethical obligation to be sagacious in how we use it.