Never Better?
Arianna Rebolini ’12 on surviving suicidality.
Better may sound like the title of a self-help book, but it is in fact an intricate melding of memoir and scholarly inquiry on the subject of suicide. Arianna Rebolini ’12 takes an intellectualizing approach to the cultural history, medical documentation, and literary notions of the desire to die and treats it with destigmatizing care. Informed by her own suicide attempts, a stint in a psychiatric ward, and an English major’s sensibility, she is remarkably candid about the allure of the darker, more macabre aspects of suicidality and speaks with unsentimental curiosity about its grip.
Arianna describes the undulations of a life consumed with suicide ideation and how, even on good days, the thought can be a persistent companion, even as it is transmuted: “I was no longer actively preoccupied with my death, but it was as if its absence required a substitute. And so I swapped in [her son’s death], and that fixation flowed along a spectrum between preparation and prevention.” In moments when he senses her distress, her young son asks questions that tug at her heart and evoke practical as well as philosophical reflections. As Arianna explores the nuances of caregiving relationships, she draws provocative connections between concepts of worry, burden, reciprocity, and autonomy. In the process, she goes beyond self-interest to consider what it is to survive someone else’s suicidality, revealing her brother’s diagnosis, his treatment, and its impact on the family.
Better is an intimate look at her own struggle broadened by an interrogation of societal factors and the systems that fail those who are most vulnerable. In doing the delicate dance of asking for and receiving help, Arianna’s own coping strategies are not above critique; at one point she admits, “I figured out how to experience the catharsis of sharing suicidality while avoiding the discomfort of vulnerability.” This level of unflinching introspection leads her to ponder the emotional relief we all seek in our desire to be known: “Is it self-awareness or self-destruction when our need to understand ourselves quashes our ability to connect with others, or when our richly developed interior world becomes the only one we trust?”
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