Quoted: Phillip Lopate on his own suicidal ideation

It seemed to me I had a "virus" inside me like malaria that could flare up at any moment and I needed always to be on guard against it. I seemed to derive creative energy from the assertion of suicide as an option. The morbidity left me freer to act or write as I wanted as much to say: no one understands me, I'll show them. It also became my little secret that while going about in the world, and functioning equably as expected, several times a week I would be batting away the thought of killing myself. -- Phillip Lopate from "Suicide of a Schoolteacher."