In \u201cBetter,\u201d Arianna Rebolini\u2019s searing memoir about depression and suicidality, she explores a question that haunts those who\u2019ve been suicidal but remain alive: \u201cHow do you know if you\u2019re better for good?\u201d This deceptively simple query serves as the emotional and intellectual backbone of a work that refuses easy answers or tidy resolutions. Instead, Rebolini invites readers into the messy, nonlinear experience of living with chronic suicidality while raising a child, maintaining a marriage, and attempting to function in a world that often seems designed to exacerbate mental health struggles.<\/p>\n
The memoir opens with a gut-punch: Rebolini, a mother to a young son named Theo, calculating whether her death might financially benefit her family more than her continued existence. She has accrued significant debt, including money owed to her therapist, Elizabeth, and feels trapped in a spiral of shame and despair. This unflinching opening establishes the raw honesty that characterizes the entire work\u2014Rebolini refuses to sanitize her darkest thoughts, instead laying them bare with startling clarity.<\/p>\n
What follows is an intimate exploration of depression that spans decades, from Rebolini\u2019s childhood through her 2017 hospitalization for suicidal ideation, to her ongoing struggle to remain present for her son. The memoir is not chronological but thematic, moving between time periods with the fluid logic of memory and psychological inquiry. This structure brilliantly mirrors the cyclical nature of depression itself\u2014how the past is never truly past when it comes to mental illness, but rather something that continually informs and shapes the present.<\/p>\n
One of the most striking aspects of \u201cBetter\u201d by Arianna Rebolini is Rebolini\u2019s intellectual engagement with the subject of suicide. Rather than treating it solely as a personal struggle, she approaches it as a scholar might, examining writings by famous authors who died by suicide\u2014particularly Sylvia Plath, whose journals become a touchstone throughout the text. She references literary theorists, sociologists, and philosophers who\u2019ve grappled with suicide, creating what she calls, borrowing from transgender writer hannah baer, \u201cthe suicide museum\u201d\u2014a space of liminality where the suicidal person dwells.<\/p>\n
This analytical approach does not distance readers from the emotional impact of suicidality; instead, it creates a framework for understanding an experience often dismissed as irrational. Rebolini demonstrates how the desire to die can have its own internal logic, particularly in a capitalist society that dehumanizes people and makes bare survival increasingly difficult for many.<\/p>\n
Her exploration of the \u201cugly mask\u201d is particularly insightful. Drawing on Dazai Osamu\u2019s novel \u201cNo Longer Human,\u201d she examines how suicidal people often come to believe they are fundamentally different from others, that they lack some essential quality that makes living bearable for everyone else. This alienation becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, pushing them further into isolation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter\u201d by Arianna Rebolini is also deeply concerned with the familial dimensions of mental illness. When Rebolini\u2019s younger brother Jordan is hospitalized for suicidality, their parallel struggles create a terrifying mirror. She writes with palpable fear about the possibility that depression might be passed down to her son Theo, noting all the ways he resembles her brother:<\/p>\n
These family connections extend to her parents as well, particularly her mother, whose anxiety and hoarding tendencies created a chaotic home environment. Rebolini explores her complex feelings toward her mother with remarkable nuance, moving from frustration to empathy as she gradually comes to understand the trauma that shaped her mother\u2019s life.<\/p>\n