This chapter was one of the hardest, yet most important ones I’ve ever written.

Perrin has to decide if he’s going to give up his life or fight for it. He’s stuck in a debate where the rational thing to do is the most irrational. Someone once asked me how I wrote it, and I said, “Easy. I write what I know.” Especially when I was pregnant with my girls, my mind was in a terrifying, dark place for months at a time.

I’ve written about the “rationality of suicide” in a blog back in 2014, after Robin Williams died: https://forestedgebooks.com/2014/08/15/suicide-is-rational-in-its-own-mind/

I caught some flak for that blog, too, from some who said I shouldn’t have written it, or shouldn’t express such ideas. I still don’t understand why not. It’s a debate many depressed people are trapped in, and it’s important to know.

Last year I taught at a residential treatment center for teenagers, many of whom had attempted suicide. The “rationality of suicide” was a common feeling, and therapy was geared to helping students discover the irrationality of it, especially suicide’s potential affects on those who are left behind.

That’s where the internal debate gets sticky. Depressed people often feel they are a burden on their loved ones, and if they removed themselves, the burden on their families would be removed.

Their death is a self-sacrifice for those they leave behind, so believes the irrational mind.

However, I personally know that’s not what happens. Survivors don’t move on. My grandfather killed himself when his first and only child–my mother–wasn’t yet a year old. She had no memory of him, but the weight of his untimely death at just age 28 dragged on her for her entire 87 years.

If you don’t choose to stay for yourself, consider staying for those you leave behind. Your death doesn’t fix anything, no matter what the rational-irrational argument in your head believes.