Suicide notes.

[wraithwitch]

I never liked Virginia Woolf. I thought she was a mad bin of the worst sort, I loathed her writing, but most of all, I had nothing but scorn for the fact that she killed herself whilst fearing another attack of depression. I thought that was cowardly. But then I was 19 at the time; I'd been clinically depressed for four years and veiwed my life like a soldier in the Somme: you were gonna get fragged, it would hurt like hell, it was all stupid anyway and there was fuck all you could do about it. I didn't think I had the power nor reason enough to end my own life. My thoughts of suicide were childish fancies to get me through a long night.

Today I read Virginia Woolf's last letter to her husband before she drowned herself.

"Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that-everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V."

I don't agree with everything she says. But I understand it, entirely. And I can't call her a coward nor hate her actions without being a hypocrite.