Cover Photo: A photograph of Sylvia Plath, smiling, as someone hands her a flower
Photograph via Anchor Books

How Do We Survive Suicide?

How much does my fear of owning this darker voice hinge on a cultural insistence that it’s unhealthy, even unnatural? What if I’m all of it?

My brother wants to die and I can’t make him better.

I’m checking myself into a psych ward, but don’t call me, I don’t want to talk about it

I love you. Don’t let it win.

Remember how you saved me. I am trying to save you too

Don’t let it winititit

possession.

no you don’tThis is not you. This is a symptom.

Oh, they were right

this isn’t you, this is just a symptom

Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: the symptoms of the foul decay within.

needs

youI

I will learn about shopping and cooking, and try to make Mother’s vacation happy and good . . . I will work two hours a day at shorthand, and brush up on my typing. I will write for three or four hours Each Day, and read for the same amount of time from a reading list I draw up carefully . . . I Will Not Lie Fallow or Be Lazy.

CONSTRUCTIVELY”). Plath’s fear is tangible: “You better learn to know yourself . . . before it is too late.”

Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It

self-homicide

Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut upMaybe one state isn’t more real than the other—when I’m happy, this feels fake, and vice versa

So crazy to think how close it feelsTo remember the me who didn’t want to do it. So abstract now. Someone else, I guess. I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying.

My voice, scared

Please don’t go yet, okay?Just wait a little longer at least

I’m already gone. This is just my body.

This Is Water

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

rightTT

TThis is water, this is water

reallyreally

Maybe the key is never letting it get so far away that I lose touch with it. Maybe the moment I let myself forget that I have depression is the moment I open myself to be destroyed by its return.

no

Arianna Rebolini is a writer from New York, formerly the books editor at BuzzFeed News. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Cut, The Guardian, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. She lives in Queens with her husband, son, and two cats. Keep up with her book recommendations at her newsletter, Reading Habits.