There is a dangerous fallacy — a biological falsehood, a feebleness of empathy, an ethical failing — in the view that people who die by suicide after living with mental illness have somehow failed at life. It is one thing to feel deeply the tragedy of that loss, to rue the help not available to them in their time of struggle; it is quite another to... See more

Knew I’d never see my twenty-fifth birthday. Am early for once. The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors. A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and

... See more

So for Plath, suicide became, it seems, the Stoic way out. At a breaking point, anticipating a confinement that would destroy the very conditions of her creativity, she decided that ending her own life seemed not merely a viable option, but a reasonable one—a conclusion very much at odds with a psychiatric consensus that sees all suicidal ideation... See more