Time & Perspective Quote by Susannah McCorkle

The sentence is built like a last performance: controlled, polite, devastating. McCorkle’s “Please believe” opens with a plea for credibility, not sympathy. She’s anticipating the backlash that often follows a suicide note: accusations of selfishness, of dramatics, of not trying hard enough. The line tries to pre-empt that moral court by framing her decision as rational, even merciful.

“I do this because I am convinced” is the language of someone tightening the narrative around an unbearable reality. Conviction substitutes for certainty; it’s persuasion aimed outward, but it also reads like self-persuasion, a musician keeping tempo while everything inside is collapsing. The phrase “cannot be helped for any length of time” suggests chronic illness, relapse cycles, treatments that buy days but not a life. It’s not just pain; it’s exhaustion with the looping hope-and-disappointment economy that illness imposes.

Then comes the most culturally loaded word here: “burden.” It signals love and shame braided together. She measures her existence by what it costs others, echoing a familiar script society hands to the sick: gratitude required, needs minimized, suffering made palatable. “I cannot bear” quietly flips the focus from others carrying her to her carrying the idea of being carried. The intent is almost managerial: to protect the people around her from caretaking, and to protect herself from witnessing their fatigue.

As a musician, McCorkle’s phrasing also reads like a farewell to an audience: she’s asking to be understood, to have the final note received as intention rather than mess.