Virginia Woolf: Her Last Letter
When people say that suicide is a selfish act, I think, “No, thinking that suicide is a selfish act is what is selfish.”
There is only one reason that people kill themselves: The pain of living has become unbearable.
We can all, to some degree, recognize the fearful thoughts and anguished feelings of others. But it is the height of arrogance to presume that we can experience the intensity of them.
By the time she was 22, Virginia Woolf had suffered two “nervous breakdowns.” They were brought on, some believe, by the deaths of her mother, her half-sister, and her father, all within a few years.
But depression is not a dark mantle that can be tossed aside after the precipitating event passes. It is more like the shadow of a monster that stalks silently behind you, ready to gobble you up if you slow your pace, even for a minute.
Woolf struggled with depression throughout her life. In March of 1941, she attempted but failed to drown herself. Several days later, she was “successful.”
She left her husband, Leonard, this note:
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 till 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.
(Source: Letters of Note)
