The depression was at its worst at night. During the day, she normally had enough keeping her busy and people to talk to that she wasn’t left alone with thoughts. But late at night is when the bad thoughts could prod without distraction. She lazily drank the rest of another Smirnoff Ice she’d stolen from the fridge.
Let's discuss Emile Durkheim’s 1897 methodological study, Suicide (or Le Suicide if you want to be French about it).
Did she want to kill herself? Not really. She doubted she would ever go make such a drastic decision. But she often thought about how if she happened to die, it wouldn’t be so bad. She thought she wouldn’t mind all that much if lightning struck her or she had a sudden heart attack and died. It would be kind of “Oh, well.”
Ximena had partly read Emile Durkheim’s Suicide to gain a better understanding on her feelings and partly because she wanted people to think she was smart. Nothing says smart like trying to process your feelings via a dead French nerd.
Reality pleasantly bent and bubbled. The phone was inches from her fingertips.
Emile Durkheim outlined four different causes of suicide. Egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic.
Anomic is not the topic of this particular discussion, but Ximena found it interesting that in the discussion of suicide on a societal level (which is what anomic is, as it is suicide motivated by a loss of societal structure such as in economic collapse or revolution or catastrophe) that Durkheim noted the following:
“Irrespective of any external regulator force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.”
In context, this means that society sets the limits for what we should expect within life given our circumstances, and staying within what is acceptable for our particular station keeps humans feeling satisfied. Were it not for these external parameters that we all implicitly agree upon, the boundless desire of humans would drive us to self-terminate, having never been satisfied.
“[Society] alone has the power necessary to stipulate law and set the point beyond which passions must not go.”
KRAMER: Do you ever yearn?
GEORGE: Yearn? Do I yearn?
KRAMER: I yearn.
GEORGE: [Incredulous] You yearn?
KRAMER: Oh, yes. Yes, I yearn. Often I — I sit and yearn. Have you yearned?
GEORGE: Well, not recently. I crave. I crave all the time. Constant craving. But I haven’t yearned.
KRAMER: And look at you.
GEORGE: Oh, Kramer. Don’t start.
Let's discuss egoism for a moment.
She wanted to talk to her dad and scream and cry. Something cliche, probably, about how he’d ruined her life.
She wanted to text one boy and just say hello. Maybe something else like “I hope you’re doing okay” when what she really wanted to text was “I miss you.” Maybe if she wished him well, he’d say something back. It was a bad idea. She was certain he didn't care. Perhaps, couldn't.
She wanted to call a different boy and bait him into sex even though she hated him, and she knew it was likely he’d accept anyway.
She wanted to call a third boy that made a gross pass at her once and she quickly stopped talking to him.
She wanted to call Raja, but she also didn’t want to bother him. Being a bother was a big factor in the decisions she made in life. She just didn’t want to put herself on people. Raja already dealt with her so much.
She wanted to be much less embarrassing than she was, and she wished that she could invest in people less.
Back to Durkheim and Seinfeld.
Egoistic suicide is the result of a prolonged sense of not belonging, or being without a tether. It is an escape from what Durkheim called “excessive individuation.” As a result of a lack of connections, the person feels that life is meaningless.
KRAMER: Do you have any prospects?
GEORGE: No…
KRAMER: You got anything on the horizon?
GEORGE: Uh… no.
KRAMER: Do you have any action at all?
GEORGE: No.
KRAMER: Do you have any conceivable reason for getting up in the morning?
GEORGE: [Dejected] I like to get the daily news…
Sometimes Ximena honestly felt like she would feel better if she just threw herself at one of these guys that treats her like dirt because it would mean someone liked having her around. Her own feelings, to her estimation, were worth less than those of other people. If it meant a life of being alone or a life of being torn apart by other people, the latter couldn’t be worse. If someone was using her, didn’t that mean she was useful?
Perhaps she would have called one of these people and told them to pick her up so they could fuck her like a dead-eyed doll or limply allow them to do whatever else they wanted to do with her, but a few things primarily stopped her.
1. Raja would be upset if something happened to her. Perhaps one of the few things holding her back from doing something destructive was the thought of disappointing him.
A few tears rolled down her face.
2. She was too drunk to do very much, and was kind of sleepy as a result. Though these thoughts swirled in her head, in the physical realm she didn’t really want to move.
3. Her frog was looking at her.
This pitiful see-saw went on at least once a week, and for the time being, these or some other combination of factors have been enough to stop Ximena from making any truly regrettable decisions. The phone clattered to the ground next to the bed.
Ximena had fallen asleep.
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