disclaimer: I’m not depressed, don’t email me

This New York Mag article from this week’s issue is about author David Foster Wallace. It doesn’t mention his suicide until the end of the story, but as a reader you’re able to (should) pick up on it if you hadn’t learned of the news elsewhere. The final graf (excerpted below) struck me because it goes against what I normally make myself believe, which is–to make a long theory short–that everything will be alright. Naive, yes, but even amid my general pessimism I like to believe that the best always emerges from the worst and that there’s always a way out. But happiness, it turns out, is relative.

I remember doing an interview with The Game, the rapper, who was experiencing a bit of depression at the time (whether you want to believe him or not is up to you). I told him the pain goes away. It has to. He hit me with, “What about the people it never goes away for?” My naivete smacked me like Ike. I’m young. I don’t know everything, so my interviews with artists are sometimes lessons for myself as well. And conversations, I hope. I realized there are people who find the worst way to make “it” go away.

“So here is the miserable truth that those of us who are given to depression are forced to face when David Foster Wallace commits suicide: It didn’t and doesn’t turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it.” (Beyond the Trouble, More Trouble, by Elizabeth Wurtzel)