Attempting to decipher precisely the thoughts of the suicide victim is much like trying to understand a foreign language by eavesdropping on a conversation. You can analyze the sounds and syllables all day long, but it's not likely you're going to understand much of what was said.

Based on the accounts of those who have attempted suicide and lived to tell about it, we know that the primary goal of a suicide is not to end life, but to end pain. People in the grips of a suicidal depression are battling an emotional agony that, to them, is so severe as to make dying a less objectionable alternative than living. One likened the feeling to "being at the bottom of a deep, dark hole and, rather than fighting to get out, wanting to burrow deeper into the bottom."

One of the more painful emotions felt by survivors comes when we try to empathize with the severity of this pain. We try to envision what we would have to feel to make the same choice, and when we imagine our loved one in that kind of pain it's almost too much to even consider.

---SOS A Handbook for Survivors of Suicide Author Jeffrey Jackson