this hope that consumes us without our knowledge

have you ever noticed that when things seem to get so bad, and you say 'i wish i would just d1e'... that you never really mean it? bc if you meant it, then wouldn't you go and ki11 yourself? if you meant it- wouldn't you just quit and give up hope? then why do we say this. even when we feel that there is really no use in continuing, still we persevere- still we attempt to live our lives. and even when we do try to take those pills, or use that knife, or some other means to our end, and it should have worked- we know that medically we should not have been able to fail- yet we still hold on to life. maybe there is something in our body, or in our mind, or our ultimate being, that still holds us back from that finality that would be our demise. or maybe we simply aren't ready to move on to whatever comes next. maybe we don't move on until we are ready, or until we reach a point where we could never be ready, no matter what else happened. what happens to those people who have only become a shell? the light within them has gone out, but they still 'live' ... but is it even really living? what do we call living? the presence of certain procedures going on inside our bodies? a heartbeat, breath, and brain activity? but can't all of these happen and you still are not living? what happens to the soul... that is the ultimate question. You hear about people being changed- not seeming in the least bit themselves. I had a friend, that her closest friend, confidante, and cousin- all one person- d1ed, and she became simply a shell. yes- she was still living- by all medical terms in any case- but her self was not... and is that not what makes us really live. she d1ed in a car , and the other driver, who was drunk, was said to be the cause of her ceasing to live, but she was already gone long before that. he just finished off her body. she had escaped to that next step weeks before she had stepped into that car that morning.
and what is that next step in any case? heaven, hell, nirvana, a void, some plane parallel to ours, yet not quite of it? what really comes after our life in this world. and is this a life at all- what if this was a step that was after a previous one? what if we simply live our lives in cycles, going back and forth between different planes. what is the point of our lives if they are just to be terminated in any case? where did our souls come from in the first place?
argh- too many questions with too few answers to be found- if they can be found at all. yet still we wonder, still we seek these intangible solutions to our queries, the x-factor, the y-factor, the z-factor in our unfinished equation of how the world works. why bother being curious if the answers cannot even be found? because we as humans have a need to know no matter the cost. we seek to understand that which we do not, and when we do, if we do, we turn to another mystery that confuses it and attempt to conquer it to. maybe it is that which drives us to not end it when we feel the despair wash over us and drown us in its miserable tears. the need to know- if i go on, what happens next???

... if I go on, what happens next?