2011-02-11 / 12:03 a.m.

�The so-called �psychotically depressed� person who tries to kill herself doesn�t do so out of quote �hopelessness� or any abstract conviction that life�s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire�s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It�s not desiring the fall; it�s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling �Don�t!� and �Hang on!�, can understand the jump. Not really. You�d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.�
� David Foster Wallace