Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)
[Dearest,
I feel certain 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.]
Her suicide note, written to her husband Leonard, is a haunting and beautiful document, in all its unadorned sincerity behind which much turmoil and anguish lie. you can hear a dramatic reading of Woolf’s note, such a wrenching missive because it is not a farewell to the world at large, but rather to a trusted friend and lover.
