Let's talk about Dianne (sorry about the language...)

She did the deed on March 26th and was tidily buried on April 1st. I still expect her to walk in the shop, late, opening a bottle of water and cracking wise. It's not like I think about it every day. But it's there, isn't it?

What was so fucking bad, Di? I'm not so simple a creature that I think everything is clear to someone outside the situation, but come on. Two beautiful (irritating, unappreciative, typical) teenagers. A husband who loves you (and doesn't hear you, and isn't a communicator, duh.) Your adorable puppies (who shit in the house,) your hobbies (miniatures might not be for the obsessive,) your friends (the church was full of people you obviously never confided in.) Gorgeous house (mortgage,) nice clothes and humongous diamonds everywhere (maybe they were your friends?) Parents who drank and didn't understand you? Rough life. Fuck you.

I guess I'll never have the chance to know why you didn't share your pain with me. I guess I shouldn't presume to understand the level of your unhappiness or judge your decision to check out. It's not fair of me to do so. I didn't walk in your shoes. But I'm pretty pissed off because I was always honest with you and you LIED to me. Apparently a lot. Over a ridiculous amount of time. So you're going to have to bear with me when I say that you fucking copped out.

But then I'm still breathing and you're not.

I'm still dealing with all the disappointment of the imperfect life. Didn't get the perfect parental units. Didn't marry the perfect man. Haven't found my bliss, or my purpose, or even a simple fucking reason to keep drawing breath, but here I am still doing it. Some days I drown in it. Some days I'm numb. But. I'm. Still. Here. And you, my fucked up friend, are not.

I win.

I think.

are smarter people really more likely to take their own lives?

"Conventional wisdom says that gifted artists like Vincent van Gogh and Sylvia Plath had something in their constitution that made them much more susceptible to depression, and thus, to suicide. One of the smartest people I ever knew, a former high school classmate who was also a world-class rower, took his own life as pressures for perfection at his Ivy-League university became too much for him. Such stories, painful and tragic, lend credence to the belief that smart people are more likely to commit suicide. But do we remember these stories because they are commonplace, or are they notable only because they are also actually rare?

Because of the relative rarity of suicide, researching its causes is problematic. Most studies therefore investigate attempted suicide, which is much more common. Since attempted suicides are very strongly correlated with actual suicides, they can serve as a reasonable proxy measurement.

Two studies by Martin Voracek seem to uphold the notion that more intelligent people are more likely to commit suicide. Voracek looked at national suicide rates and average IQ, and found that countries with higher average IQs also had higher suicide rates. But a study released last week suggested the opposite might be true. A team led by G. David Batty looked at military conscription records of over 1 million Swedish men, and found that those with higher IQs were significantly less likely to be admitted to a hospital for a suicide attempt than those with lower IQs. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic status, education, and a variety of other factors, those in the top 10 percent of IQ scores were about four times less likely to attempt suicide than the bottom 10 percent."

Read the rest of the article by Dave Munger here.