“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.”
--- David Foster Wallace
