Because there's a million things that can make you sad and want to write a suicide note and just die. Starving children everywhere. Your home burning down, your daughter getting kidnapped, finding your dog's been run over. Or the worst of all; getting dumped! How could any just world allow its citizens to drive themselves into the arms of loneliness and abandonment.
I jest. Though I've never been dumped, I've seen it happen, and I agree it looks like it sucks. What I can't understand is why people who have been dating less than a year need to pine for longer than a day. Your lover didn't die. The love did. Love is certainly more resilient than people realize. If it deserves to flourish between two people, it will. People break up all the time and it is never over one little thing. Ever. Sometimes there is just no common ground. So why should everyone find it absolutely necessary to pour out their whole hearts to anyone who will listen? "He didn't like me, we're too different, oh god, why were we so different?!" Um, you haven't even lived out half your life yet. In all likelihood you'll find someone significantly better than him who will somehow stand your vapid presence.
After personally listening to a simply unjustifiable amount of heartbreak sagas in my 19 years, I can't even begin to be moved by them anymore. I have a hard time being sympathetic longer than a day for most people. I've read that story and I know the ending. I don't enjoy hearing the beginning over and over. It doesn't make me sad.
What does move me, is a book called the Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. In plain view, she's a young girl with an amazing life ahead of her and just got an amazing opportunity to live in New York City. How lovely! Except that she's dreadfully unhappy. Why? No goddamn reason. I suppose clinical depression is a reason, but aside from her mental affliction, her life looks fucking awesome.
So why do I enjoy this novel? I'm annoyed by girls who whine about being dumped by the men of their dreams but am enamored with the story of a girl with a marvelous life who wants to end it all. I didn't understand until now.
It's really the saddest fucking thing in the world, to be suicidal in spite of your brilliant life because your brain has genetic poison. Mental disorder has to be one of the utmost depressing instances of existence. And unless you have ever dealt with it, you really don't understand. You simply can't. You can't explain hunger to someone who has never felt it. Same idea. Something you're born with, that possibly leads to your demise, but only a choice few in the world ever experience it. The saddest thing in the world is to be sad without a tangible reason for it. Because you can't fucking fix it.
Then, there are these people like Sylvia Plath, who weave their neuroses into heavenly tapestries of words and euphonies. You can only imagine what depression feels like. In the same way a person who hasn't eaten for days could write so naturally about hunger. While you're reading, you find yourself suddenly starving. I never understood what Plath was saying until I felt what it was like to be stuck in an infinite spiral. To be intoxicated by the genuine brain cells you were born into. One day I'll write about the mental malfunctions I overcame. But that story is a long one and will be saved for another day.
