I was talking about suicide with my mom the other day. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.' And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. It’s not desiring the fall it’s terror of the flames. 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. 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. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. 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. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. '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. All you’re feeling is an incredible itch to sneeze, and you’re certain that anything short of sneezing wouldn’t relieve you of the sensation.Īmerican novelist David Foster Wallace gives us a better analogy: You don’t think about your family or the reasons not to do it. The impulse can be so strong, that you simply follow your body’s command without thinking too much of it. Suicidal depression is like having to sneeze. But if I can, let me try to translate the urgency to take one’s life into language you might grasp.

I know that probably doesn’t make sense to anyone who has never experienced severe depression.

When I first heard about Robin’s death, my first reaction was this: “The poor guy sneezed.” That means being brave and writing as honestly as I can on a taboo subject so few people understand, even if it means getting disapproving stares from other parents at my kids’ school.

If this brutal beast of an illness is strong enough to kill someone with the passion, determination, and genius of Robin Williams, then we must do everything we can to protect those who are more fragile. I just really don’t care anymore what people think because lives are at stake. I don’t know if you have noticed, but ever since Robin Williams died, I have removed the filter from my writing that keeps me safe from jaw-dropping, disappointing head gestures, and all kinds of judgments that authentic writing invites.

Cry of fear suicide