If some in-between state existed, some other alternative to death, I suspect many suicidal people would take it. People who’ve survived suicide attempts have reported wanting not so much to die as to stop living so they could free themselves from pain, a strange dichotomy but a valid one nevertheless. The one question everyone who’s known someone who’s killed him- or herself has asked without exception, that they ache to have answered more than any other, is simply: why? Why did their friend, child, parent, spouse, or sibling take their own life? Even when a note explaining the reasons is found, lingering questions usually remain: yes, they felt enough despair to want to die, but why did they feel that? A person’s suicide often takes the people it leaves behind by surprise (only intensifying survivor’s guilt for failing to see it coming). Suicide often devastates those left behind: pain mixed with guilt, anger, and regret makes for a bitter drink, the taste of which can take many months or even years to wash out of some mouths.
Though many of us don’t know anyone who’s killed him- or herself, many of us know people left behind by the suicide of someone close to them.
