It's kinda amusing that JKR's own life goes against the values she preaches. She always goes on about the value of love and family and the like, but in her own life she was depressed and wanted to die until she became rich, successful and famous, despite her vaunted family and love.

 

Heh, Rowling created the HP universe AND the emo fangirl. Brilliant.

 

You're giving JKR far far too much credit. The emo fangirl was around long before she went through her own emo phase, the web just wasn't as prevalent so they couldn't get together and reinforce and encourage each other's pathetic whining.

I'm not sure if contemplating suicide is normal, but depression in junior high and high school aged kids isn't unusual. I think it has something to do with transitioning from the subconscious "i am the center of the world" thinking most kids have and realizing how much life can suck. Because kids are cruel to each other they get sad, because its difficult to realize that what they're going through isn't unusual they think they're the only ones (thus the "nobody understands!" whining), and becoming older and having to become responsible for themselves and their futures adds more weight to their shoulders.

Or something like that.

For a post college age (how old was she when she was thinking about suicide?) single mother the motivations would be completely different. Without knowing too much about her personal life (I'm honestly not that interested in it) its hard to say what the contributing factors are, but ALL suicide is selfish. With the exception of the doesn't-actually-happen-in-real-life situation of "kill yourself or I'll kill x children/women/puppies" suicide is a selfish, cowardly way out of dealing with the difficulties of life.

And I say this as someone who has more experience than I'd like with the depressing, nearly emo shit rolling around in my head.

As much as I enjoy verbally destroying JKR, and in the interest of insulting her for the right reasons, I think its only fair to point out that the suicidal thoughts occurred after book 1. Unless she had the entire series planned out at that point (which is possible but I don't know that) then saying she's being hypocritical for being suicidal while writing her "friends and love are most important" crap would be false. Its possible that her recovery from depression motivated her to change the story into what it eventually became.

It leads to the interesting question of what a depressive JKR would write the series as. Wouldn't be kids books, but it would definitely be different.

 

Clearly Lily didn't sacrifice herself for Harry out of love... No, she was an Angsty Ginger Bitch who got depressed with her life and decided to off herself, using her own pointless death as the fuel to power a dark magic to kill Voldemort.

Jesus... just thinking about JKR's comments. She was thinking about killing herself, even though she had children that needed to be cared for. What was she thinking? That she'd off herself and not worry about how her kids would fend for themselves? That her kids would just magically be able to raise themselves or that the state would just ship them off to somewhere to care for them for her?

 

Sounds alot like my sister=)

She doesn't care about anyone but herself even though she has 2 kids. It is quite sick really.

 

What you're failing to note is that she didn't kill herself and leave her children all alone and abandoned. She suffered depression and suicidal thoughts, but did not act on them. I wouldn't run her done for having the thoughts, as she did not kill herself or make an attempt at it.

There is a big difference between being deprate and considering a completely selfish course of action and actually shunting other's needs to the side and going through with it.

 

If you're going to talk about how she's a horribly person for thinking about killing herself when she has kids, when all she's done is consider it, then I'm a horrible person too.

After all, I'm thinking about nailing you to the floor and taking your skin off with a cheese grater for saying such stupid things in some useless attempt to fit in while insulting JKR.

At least insult her for actual reasons. The stupidity of the article in general, and the fact that it was on page one are enough ammunition.