toppers' house

i read in nick hornby's a long way down, that new year's eve is the most likely day that anybody who wanted to kill himself would kill himself.

i could easily understand why.

if the next year was one that you had hope for, or one you had plenty or some to look forward to, it'd be totally illogical to kill yourself. it'd be almost insanely stupid to kill yourself if you had just suffered a major setback in your life.

because there is something left, because there is more to your life, because you only lost a part of everything. and if you play around with the idea in your mind, you still have everything.

but if the next year was one where you did not have anything to look forward to, one which you can already see seemingly insurmountable obstacles strewn in your way, it's easy to see why you'd kill yourself on new year's eve.

when the closure of a year will not bring about closure of your problems, when its closure means you are extending your problems to the next, death seems an easier route to an end.

when the beginning of a year means another period of strife and struggle, a longer time to suffer instead of peace, you might just want to end it.

and especially on new year's eve, when everybody else seems to have so much going for them for the next year, while you have nothing, you might feel as if you might never catch up.

and while the crowd does a rowdy, crazy countdown to the momentous leap from one year to the next, you realize you can stand right in the midst of the happiest people and have nothing rub on to you, you start to doubt whether you can ever be as happy as everyone else is.

you wonder if such happiness is a God-given right you were denied, or a secret you never learnt how to unlock.

and you are not just trapped in your circles of thoughts, but also in concrete, rock-hard real life circumstance, it is easy to understand.

i could easily understand why people would kill themselves on new year's eve.