It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

The Exit Door Makes Staying Bearable

There's something almost counterintuitive about Nietzsche's point here: thinking about escape can paradoxically keep you from needing it. It's not glorifying the act itself, but recognizing that having an exit door—even just knowing it exists in your mind—can make the room feel less suffocating. On a sleepless night when everything feels unbearable, the mere thought that you could walk away, that this state isn't permanent and mandatory, can be enough to get through until morning. It's a kind of psychological pressure valve.

This matters now because we live in a culture that treats dark thoughts as dangerous thoughts we should never acknowledge. But Nietzsche understood something psychologists are rediscovering: suppressing the thought entirely can intensify it. The honesty itself—admitting "I've thought about not existing," rather than denying it—can be weirdly stabilizing. It removes the shame around having the thought, which paradoxically reduces its power.

The real wisdom isn't that suicide is good or should happen. It's that acknowledging our darkest moments, naming them plainly, can strip them of their grip. When you stop fighting the thought and just look at it directly, it often dissolves. The freedom to think even our worst thoughts is sometimes what keeps us alive.