I understand she was supposed to be depressed, but was there something specific that caused this? Was it what she wrote in her diary about her dad and Gus? I just thought it was very vague why she wanted to die.
shareIn the book, Emily had two reasons that led to her depression: she had been sexually abused as a child (by a stranger) and then when she got pregnant by Chris she couldn't go through with an abortion because she couldn't stand the doctor touching her. So she felt stuck in her situation, because deep down she didn't want to marry Chris.
It was a combination of sexual abuse trauma and ambivalence about all the pressure surrounding her to stay with Chris her whole life, despite not feeling truly in love with him (in her thoughts in the book, she felt that her upbringing was so closely entwined with Chris that she viewed him more as a brother than a lover.) But she feared letting her whole family down by not staying with him, and the pregnancy only confirmed that she would HAVE to.