I felt despair. The wordâs overused and banalified now, despair, but itâs a serious word, and Iâm using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture â a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. Itâs maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But itâs not these things, quite. Itâs more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that Iâm small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. Itâs wanting to jump overboard. -
David Foster Wallace