When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that suicide may seem like an end to pain for the individual, but it causes suffering for those left behind.
Jeannette Walls highlights the tragic misconception that suicide is a solution to one's pain. It suggests that while individuals may believe they are relieving their own suffering by taking their lives, they are instead transferring that pain to friends and family, leaving them to grapple with the emotional aftermath and loss. This perspective invites a deeper understanding of the far-reaching effects of such choices, encouraging empathy for both those in pain and those they leave behind.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a mental health awareness event to highlight the importance of seeking help.
I was in control of what people thought of me, but I had no control over what they thought of my mother. When I asked my mother, 'How do I tell people about you?' her answer was, 'Tell the truth'. But of course, the truth is never simple.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It didn’t really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.
In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.
Some people who've read my story think I had a terrible childhood and that I was neglected or even abused, while others feel that my parents, while certainly flawed, also had truly wonderful qualities. And that's the way it should be, because in real life two people can look at the same president and one will see a hero and the other a villain.
You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim
I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.
At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments.
We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.
Social acceptance, 'being liked,' has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay.
Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.
I've had no contact with my daughter for years. That's her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don't want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.
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