US Suicide Rates Rise

Seems crazy, but not that crazy. Welcome to the meat-grinder. The culture creates a standard of success and then hamstrings the ability to achieve it. Wealth has become morality, and the measure of individual importance.

Works us until we have no more to give, or until it has no use for us. A person reaches the endgame, and realizes it's only the endgame for them, and that the game wasn't even a game. They've been pushing a millstone attached to nothing, and they only made money for the person who sold it to them.

I'm not sure knowing this early on will insulate me from the despair. Suicide isn't something I think I can understand by itself; it seems to be tied to a lot of not-feeling of certain emotions. I understand despair, and I understand self-loathing. I suppose if I lost my sense of self, the idea that I exist, then ending a non-existent state might seem a rational thing to do.

It must seem rational, I think. Knowing that I am often irrational is a bleak comfort. Two layers of defense against a culture that is eating itself alive.