Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.

It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

The motive is paramount. Without a strong motive, you’re sunk.

My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn’t want to write and the question I’d asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn’t have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question.

The debate was wearing me out. Once you’ve posed that question, it won’t go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won’t.

Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark— why not kill myself? Missed the bus— better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie— maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.

Actually, it was the only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

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It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.

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Something common to both [viscosity and velocity] is repetitive thought. Experiences seem prerecorded, stylized. Particular patterns of thought get attached to particular movements or activities, and before you know it, it's impossible to approach that movement or activity without dislodging an avalanche of prethought thoughts.

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Here comes the I'm-no-good thought. That takes care of today. All day the insistent dripping of I'm no good. The next thought, the next day, is I'm the Angel of Death. This thought has a glittering expanse of panic behind it, which is unreachable. Viscosity flattens the effervescence of panic.

These thoughts have no meaning: I'm no good, I'm the Angel of Death, I'm stupid, I can't do anything. Thinking the first thought triggers the whole circuit... Once, these thoughts must have had a meaning. They must have meant what they said. But repetition has blunted them. They have become background music, a Muzak medley of self-hatred themes.

Which is worse, overload or underload? Luckily, I never had to choose. One or the other would assert itself, rush or dribble through me, and pass on.

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What were we, that they could know us so quickly and so well?

We were probably better than we used to be, before we went into the hospital. At a minimum we were older and more self-aware. Many of us had spent our hospital years yelling and causing trouble and were ready to move on to something else. All of us had learned by default to treasure freedom and would do anything we could to get it and keep it.

The question was, What could we do?

Could we get up every morning and take showers and put on clothes and go to work? Could we think straight? Could we not say crazy things when they occurred to us?

Some of us could, some of us couldn't. In the world's terms, though, we were all tainted.