“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.â€
― David Foster Wallace
7 comments
The flames…burning, slowly, scraping deeper into your skin, swallowing you up slowly… burning your flesh away in agony and pain, a slow and scary death…
So it must be better to fall to your quick death on the pavement.
This explains a lot about why people commit suicide; they fear something terribly and are trying to runaway from it.
Its sad so many people can become so desperate…
This is so well written. What a great analogy to explain why some people consider suicide. Death can be much more appealing than whatever hell we’re enduring here on earth.
It’s not that anyone really wants to fall, but that no one really wants to burn; pretty much any alternative is less-bad than burning to death. I can think of a few that would be worse, but those are rare outliers.
you totally nailed it. That is exactly how it is and no one in my family can understand it.
you totally nailed it. That is exactly how it is and no one in my family can understand it. My family wonders why I didn’t cry out when my son was being born why it seemed to them I had no pain and I tried to explain to them that this is the emotional pain and mental pain I carry every day.
I haven’t read this post yet, I just wanted to address “Wordless Within” and revel over getting the reference their name suggests. A friend of mine also went with the username “Wordless” for the same reason, I really love that song. Just wanted to pop in and acknowledge that 🙂