I honestly think people are misconstruing the song to be about suicide when it's really about realizing you've found your place all along and learnt to live and enjoy it.

• Get me some rope

• Tie me to dream

• Give me the hope

• to run out of steam

This is paralleling Jeff's life. He's basically saying he misses his former "dream" life (or that his dream life may be dying) and longs for it to return (and would do anything to hold on to it) and hopes that this longing will "run out of steam" so he can move past it.

• Somebody said

• it could be here

• We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year

This speaks to the community college itself - that in Jeff's mind it is a depressing end and that he is resigning himself to mediocrity where he feels ultimately trapped and held hostage (because he is obligated to attend to re-assume his former life)

• I can't count the reasons I should stay

• One by one they all just fade away

This is where it gets interesting because I feel it's more playing fast and loose with double negatives than anything else. Jeff has "so many reasons" why (enough that he can't count them) he should hold on to his old life and expectations that he couldn't possibly consider (or enjoy) an alternative. However, the last line shows that the charm of the school, of making real friends/family and finding actual purpose is slowly eating away at those expectations he set for himself and winning him over.

Jeff's arc in the actual show largely mirrors this inner turmoil and eventual acceptance and so I always assumed the song was designed deliberately to tell Jeff's story via a bit of foreshadowing.