Better

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A gutsy, riveting memoir that intimately explores suicide, its legacy in families, and the often cyclical, crooked path of recovery.Why do so many people want to die--and how could anyone ever begin to understand how a person chooses suicide?After a decade of therapy and a stint in a psychiatric ward to treat suicidal depression, Arianna Rebolini was "better." She'd published her first book, enjoyed an influential, rewarding publishing job, and celebrated both a marriage and the birth of her first child. And yet: the pull of suicide was still there. One night, during bath time, as her young son Theo lined the tub with toy cars, she began calculating how many pills she'd have to down to effectively end her life.In Better, Arianna interweaves the story of her monthlong period of crisis with decades of personal and family history, from her first cry-for-help in the fourth grade with a plastic knife to her fears of passing down the dark seed of suicide to her own son, and her brother's own life-threatening affliction. To understand this dark desire, Arianna pored over the journals, memoirs, and writings of famous suicides, and eventually developed theories on what makes a person suicidal. Her curiosity was driven by the morbid, impossible need to understand what happens in the fatal moment between wanting to kill oneself and doing it--or, unthinkably, the moment between regretting the action and realizing it can't be undone. Then her own brother became institutionalized, and Arianna realized that all of the patterns and trenchant insights could not crack the shell of his annihilating depression. Realizing our understanding of suicide needs to acknowledge factors outside of psychology--like poverty, loneliness, and genetics--her research expanded. A harrowing intellectual and emotional odyssey marked by remarkable clarity and compassion, Better is a tour through the seductive darkness of death and a life-affirming memoir. Arianna touches on suicide's public fallout and its intensely private origins as she searches for answers to the profound question: how do we get better for good?