I've asked myself the same thing so many times: why does it seem so "easy" for some people to die, like it just takes a second, while for others — myself included — it's this long, torturous process of thinking about it without ever going through with it?
I think there are two very different mechanisms at play.
The ones who take their lives "suddenly," after a fight or a crisis, are often driven by a powerful, almost animalistic impulse. All the pain concentrates into a single moment, explodes, and the brain just shuts down. There's no room for fear or reflection — just action. It's like a blackout, and the body moves without thinking. If the circumstances allow it (no one around, access to a method, isolation), the act completes itself in seconds. That's it.
But those who've been thinking about it for years are often stuck in a kind of psychological limbo — the pain is chronic, not sharp. There's too much thinking, too much imagining, analyzing every detail. And in the middle of all that thinking, the survival system kicks in: fear, uncertainty, the sense of "maybe not today." It's like walking with the handbrake on. The mind says one thing, the body says another. And you end up frozen, exhausted, pissed off at yourself for not even being able to "do this right."
So no, it's not that others are braver. Sometimes the impulse just wins. But in the stillness, there's a paradox: that part of you keeping you stuck might also be the part that — in some other version of reality — still wants to live, or at least wants something to change.
I'm not saying this to be poetic. I'm saying it because if you're still here, even if you're angry and tired, maybe there's still something inside you that hasn't fully given up yet. And maybe, just maybe, it's worth listening to that before shutting it out completely.