A Long Way Down

“There’s more than one way to be a loser. There’s more than one way of losing.” 

JJ can only see himself as a loser on the roof of Toppers’ House. What he can’t yet see is that just as there are many ways to lose, there are also many ways to win; he has options for winning in his life besides his band. 

“It wasn’t that we thought she was really suicidal; it was just that it felt like she might do whatever she wanted to do at any given moment, and if she wanted to jump off a building to see what it felt like, she’d try it.” 

JJ’s perception of Jess is astute. Later, when Jess begins to examine her own mind and the way it works, it is clear that she would agree with JJ’s assessment. She can never feel dependable because she knows that she acts impulsively, and the next impulse always seems to be on its way. 

“Please stop me. Please help me. Please make me into the kind of person who wants to live, the kind of person who has a bit missing.”

In her mind, Maureen pleads with Martin to help her. She believes that there is a small hope that she can continue living, but she also believes that it will depend on another person helping her and providing something that she cannot give herself. This will partially be borne out by the orderlies’ invitation to the pub and quiz later, but Maureen will also learn that she has more control over her life than she thought. 

“Not one of us descended those stairs having come to the conclusion that life was a beautiful and precious thing.”

As Martin comes down from the roof on New Year’s Eve, he doesn’t understand why they didn’t all jump. Nothing has changed in their lives except that they met each other. Ironically, the four unlikely friends will change their cynical worldviews by the end of the novel and see life as a good thing.

“I sinned against the Church, and the price you pay for that is Matty.”

Early on, Maureen can only see Matty as a punishment. If she had not had sex, she would not have been punished, and if she had not been punished, she could have had a life that did not lead to the roof of Toppers’ House. This reflects how strongly she clings to her religious beliefs—beliefs which also dictate that suicide is a sin. Maureen went against the Church’s religious tenants and had sex out of marriage. This brings to question whether she will disobey the Church again and kill herself.

“When you’re sad—like, really sad, Toppers’ House sad—you only want to be with other people who are sad.”

Even though none of the characters seem very fond of each other, they continue to see one another because no one else seems to understand how they feel. Jess has never felt like anyone understands her until she meets other people who seem to want to die.

“Kids send you on a journey. Matty and I got stuck at the bus stop, though. He didn’t learn to walk or talk, let alone read or write: he stayed the same every single day, and I stayed the same, too.”

Part of Maureen’s despair stems from the fact that she cannot see a way to evolve. She is trapped in a state of stasis—until the novel’s concluding pages—that does not seem so different from the way in which Matty’s condition traps him.

“I didn’t feel like a dying man; I felt like a man who every now and again wanted to die, and there’s a difference. A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time.”

This quote foreshadows JJ’s later realization that he did not want to end his life because he hated it, but because he loved living and was terrified that he could not live in the way he wanted to. He was full of emotions when he was suicidal, not numb or apathetic. He felt alive when he wanted to die.

“When I was in the papers a couple of years ago, after the Jen thing, I think the feeling was I was Troubled rather than Bad.”

Jess’s perception of herself begins to shift. Once she believes that she is “Bad,” she feels more hopeless. She no longer sees her actions as having a possible solution because they are not the result of a problem like Jen leaving. Her troubles stem from herself and the notion of badness, a quality that she does not believe she can change in herself.

“I do think I’m only a little mad. If I were really mad, I wouldn’t have worried about tidying up. And if I were really, properly mad, I wouldn’t have minded what they found.”

Before the group comes over for the first time, Maureen gets another hint that she actually wants to live. There would be no point in cleaning up for company unless she cared enough about how the others might perceive her. Maureen is also trying to reconcile with the idea that she is not mentally ill but instead deeply depressed with the state of her life’s circumstances.

“That’s just what happens to everyone. It’s called getting older.”

Martin listens to JJ talk about how he envisions the rest of his life, but because he is significantly older, what JJ describes is, for Martin, simply what it means to age. JJ thinks he cannot face the prospect of having to do the same things for the rest of his life, and Martin is old enough to know that most of life is doing the same things over and over, like it or not, and that no one gets to be the exception.

“There are lots of good reasons to lose your faith.”

Maureen is conflicted about her loss of faith. It is easier for her to see bad in the world than good. In this passage, she contemplates that it might be more of a miracle to never lose faith than to waver in the face of trials.

“Most people have a rope that ties them to someone, and that rope can be short or long. You don’t know how long, though, it’s not your choice.”

Jess feels unmoored because she thinks she is only tied to Jen, and Jen is gone. She is not tied to her parents because they don’t get along. She recognizes that she is tied to a missing version of Jen because Jen never judged her.

“I do think. I know no one believes it, but I do. It’s just that my way of thinking is different from everyone else’s. Before I think I have to get angry and maybe a bit violent.”

Jess does not like being thought of as a mindless, erratic reactionary, even though she knows how unpredictable and impulsive her behavior can be. Until she meets the group, she has never tried to explain to anyone what it feels like inside of her. They allow her to think out loud without expelling her from the group.

“This is how I feel every day, and people don’t want to know that.”

When they listen to the Nick Drake album, Maureen is the only one other than JJ who seems to understand what Drake was trying to convey. She is able to learn more about her feelings because she can express them to the group. She does not believe that people who did not understand suicidal sadness would listen to her, so she has never tried to express her feelings so openly.

“Asking the head I have now to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dialing your own telephone number on your own telephone. Either way, you get an engaged signal.”

Martin expresses one of the conundrums of mental health and the practice of studying the mind. Every human brain is fallible, but that fallible brain is the only tool that can observe and study itself, calling the accuracy of its conclusions into question.

“My dad wonders who I choose to be like this, but the truth is, you have no choice, and that’s what makes you feel like killing yourself.”

After Jess gets drunk and sick on the holiday, Martin is angry with her and leaves. She equates his reaction with those of her father. Jess is not happy about the way she acts, but she is unable to stop herself, and it is that knowledge of all the future incidents to come that makes her feel suicidal.

“First, he made us realize that we weren’t capable of killing ourselves. And secondly, this information made us suicidal again.”

After the man jumps off the roof while they watch, the group realizes that they were not as serious about suicide as they had believed. Now they are faced with the prospect of lifetimes of misery, while also having the option of suicide taken away.

“He hated being part of a family. And that’s when I decided it was his business. If he had the freedom to fuck around, then he had the freedom to kill himself too.”

Cindy explains to Jess and Maureen why she moved on from Martin, and why she can’t take him back even if he is suicidal. By withdrawing from him, she freed herself of responsibility for his behavior, and Martin would not be able to blame his actions going forward on anyone but himself

“We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it.”

JJ’s thinks this before he tells Lizzie and Eddie—unsuccessfully—that he wants them all to get back together. Until he expresses what he wants, unequivocally, there is no empirical proof that he can’t have it. Once he has said what he wants, and is denied, he can act out of certainty and not speculation or fear of rejection.

“I could see suddenly that I was in more trouble than I had thought. What if I had a future on this planet? What then? How many people could I piss off, and how many places could I run from?”

Jess is more afraid of her future than she was of ending her life. Before she meets Nodog, she can only contemplate her future as an endless string of people she will disappoint and places she will flee.

“It’s a currency like any other, self-worth. You spend years saving up, and you can blow it all in an evening if you so choose. I’d done forty-odd years’ worth in the space of a few months, and now I had to save up again.” 

As Martin begins working with Pacino, he has accepted that he cannot regain his self-respect all at once. It is progress that he has committed to working on rebuilding for however long it takes, and that he recognizes it as a possibility.

“Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go.”

While helping Pacino improve his reading, Martin understands that his greatest challenge will be in disciplining himself to stick to his commitment to improving his life by any means necessary, even when he can’t see if what he is trying is working.