Virginia Woolf’s Handwritten Suicide Note: A Painful and Poignant Farewell (1941)

handwriting-virginia-woolf-10921544-600-870

It seems like a very mor­bid and inhu­man prac­tice to treat the sui­cide note as a piece of lit­er­a­ture, even if the author of said note is a writer as famous as Vir­ginia Woolf. And yet, why not? I can antic­i­pate all sorts of eth­i­cal objec­tions hav­ing to do with decen­cy, and I share some of those sen­ti­ments. Let us not for­get, how­ev­er, that death has often been a lit­er­ary occa­sion: the long tra­di­tion of record­ed last words ranges from deathbed con­fes­sions to the strange­ly the­atri­cal genre of the gal­lows speech (see Socrates, Anne Boleyn, or John Brown). Like those unfor­get­table fig­ures of his­to­ry, Vir­ginia Woolf’s last script­ed words are pored over by lay read­ers and schol­ars alike (see, for exam­ple, pages on Woolf’s final words from Smith Col­lege and Yale).

Woolf’s death, in March of 1941, occa­sioned the third of her sui­cide let­ters, and yes, it feels unseem­ly to linger over her last piece of prose. Per­haps it is the mode of death, sui­cide still being a soci­etal taboo, thought of as trag­ic even when it’s under­tak­en calm­ly and ratio­nal­ly by some­one ready to leave this world. And in many cas­es, espe­cial­ly those involv­ing men­tal ill­ness, death seems so need­less, so extreme. Such was the case with Woolf, who drowned her­self after a long strug­gle with what would prob­a­bly be called today bipo­lar dis­or­der. 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. See a scan of the hand­writ­ten note at the top, and read the full tran­script below. Direct­ly above, 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.

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vir­ginia Woolf and Friends Dress Up as “Abyssin­ian Princes” and Fool the British Roy­al Navy (1910)

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

“A Haunt­ed House” by Vir­ginia Woolf

Find Works by Vir­ginia Woolf in Our Col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


by | Permalink | Comments (62) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (62)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Chris says:

    Hear­ing voic­es (delu­sion) is no symp­tom of bipo­lar dis­or­der but schiz­o­phre­nia. Schiz­o­phre­nia can occur in form of bursts, and the voic­es very usu­al­ly lead the patient to self-dam­age.

    • manimal says:

      Chris, I am afraid you are incor­rect. Bipo­lar dis­or­der can include delu­sions, hal­lu­ci­na­tions and severe para­noia, dur­ing both man­ic and severe depres­sive cycles. If you actu­al­ly have any real inter­est, check the web­sites of NAMI, the Nat Insti­tute of Men­tal Health (www.nimh.nih.gov), the Mayo Clin­ic (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/bipolar-disorder/DS00356/DSECTION=symptoms) and a host of oth­er rep­utable orga­ni­za­tions that are backed by edu­cat­ed, expe­ri­enced psy­chi­a­trists, psy­chol­o­gists, doc­tors, advo­cates and even those who have expe­ri­enced these things.nnAlso, no one actu­al­ly knows what men­tal ill­ness Vir­ginia Woolf may have had. Just using myself as an exam­ple of recent psy­chi­atric faux pas, I’d been diag­nosed for over a decade with depres­sion, then Bipo­lar Type 1 for about 5 years and, final­ly, “Schizoaf­fec­tive Dis­or­der Bipo­lar Type 1 with Psy­chot­ic Fea­tures”, in addi­tion to severe PTSD, when I con­tin­ued to have hal­lu­ci­na­tions, etc, despite hav­ing a rel­a­tive­ly “base­line” mood. The under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness, men­tal health and psy­chi­a­try con­tin­ues to grow every day and it real­ly does­n’t help for indi­vid­u­als to toss false infor­ma­tion into the mix. nnDo some read­ing. There are many fas­ci­nat­ing things to learn about in this field.

  • Timothy says:

    Sur­pris­ing: the base­line moves upward from left to right, which nor­mal­ly indi­cates optimism/hopefulness.

  • shona Mckensie says:

    If it seems a mor­bid and an inhu­man prac­tice to treat a sui­cide note as a piece of lit­er­a­ture, then I am com­fort­ed that oth­ers have found them­selves treat­ing it as such.

    I was much struck recent­ly on read­ing a moth­er’s descrip­tion of a sud­den dete­ri­o­ra­tion in her sev­en year old daugh­ter’s con­di­tion. Her child has a ter­mi­nal brain tumour. (Clau­di­a’s Cause on face­book)

    The sen­tences were mud­dled, con­fused and con­tra­dic­to­ry, but it enforced with such clar­i­ty her dis­tress that I thought it one of the most pow­er­ful pieces of writ­ing I have ever read. I felt ashamed of hav­ing thought of such a thing.

    Hap­pi­ly and unex­pect­ed­ly, her child sur­vived the infec­tion she was fight­ing at that time, though of course the over­all mes­sage of her moth­er’s post­ings remains the same.

  • many many peo­ple w/bipolar dis­or­der hear voic­es dur­ing the man­ic part of their ill­ness. soooo sad.

  • marc says:

    a sad sto­ry, and end­ing.

  • Audrey says:

    Such mov­ing com­ments. But fol­low that link — Pat­ti says, and she is a sim­ple word­smith — “we are wav­ing — elas­tic”. Grace the waves.

  • YungGod says:

    Hey Chris, I was want­ed to write to you to tell you you’re wrong. Peo­ple with bipo­lar dis­or­der to hear voic­es and hal­lu­ci­nate at the same inten­si­ty as shi­z­o­phre­nia, dif­fer­ence is that it’s episod­ic. Even though peo­ple with bipo­lar do hal­lu­ci­nate and hear voic­es some­times, I still think she was speak­ing about her own thoughts rather than audi­ble voic­es.

  • Ryan says:

    There’s noth­ing wrong with being fas­ci­nat­ed by a sui­cide note. Lit­er­a­ture, in all forms, is about emo­tion, and there is no stronger or intense emo­tion than feel­ing it nec­es­sary to take one’s life.

  • Volchek says:

    There’s no dis­or­der. She sim­ply became a chan­nel for many spir­its. She has become in tune with spir­i­tu­al world — she need­ed to con­trol it but no one told her that she’s ok. So she offed her self in order to move on.

    men­tal ill­ness is a myth. It’s an indus­try.

    • DjembeTheBard says:

      Men­tal ill­ness is a myth?nnYou’re an idiot. So many peo­ple in the world today strug­gle against their own minds- every sec­ond, and every thought that comes with it, just to con­tin­ue liv­ing, to find even the slight­est rea­son to keep going. And you’re say­ing they’re mak­ing it all up?nnnWhat the f**k gives you the right to triv­i­alise these con­di­tions?

    • GrahamCracker says:

      Men­tal ill­ness is a myth, but com­mu­ni­cat­ing with spir­its is com­plete­ly legit? nI think there may be some spir­its play­ing around with your men­tal state.….

    • manimal says:

      You are enti­tled to your opin­ion, but this is one area where it might be best to keep it to your­self, Volchek. I, and thou­sands, maybe hun­dreds of thou­sands, of oth­ers, live with men­tal ill­ness every day. The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, insur­ance com­pa­nies pup­peteer­ing our lives, these new “ther­a­pies” that are invent­ed to appease the insur­ance com­pa­nies… THOSE are indus­tries. But even still, many, if not most, of us need some kind of med­ica­tion or even sev­er­al (allo­path­ic, aryuvedic, herbal, sup­ple­ments, vit­a­mins, or any com­bi­na­tion of those), some ther­a­pies or ther­a­pists can be ben­e­fi­cial and insur­ance com­pa­nies are absolute­ly essen­tial for emer­gen­cies like hos­pi­tal stays or the mun­dane, such as meds, physi­cians’ appoint­ments, cov­er­age or dis­counts for alter­na­tive treat­ments (if one is lucky enough to have that includ­ed), etc. Not to men­tion, some peo­ple, like myself, have very seri­ous phys­i­cal health con­di­tions that we can­not afford to man­age with­out insur­ance and would invari­ably die in a short peri­od of time were that insur­ance gone. So indus­try or not, some of these things are nec­es­sary evils. nnNow I do feel that my men­tal ill­ness­es allows me to access ener­gies and be in tune with the spir­i­tu­al world in ways that neu­ro-typ­i­cal indi­vid­u­als are not/cannot be. How­ev­er, I also know that I have seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions and issues that effect all areas of func­tion­ing in my life and are often fright­en­ing, off-putting or dis­turb­ing to neu­ro-typ­i­cals. it is a frus­trat­ing and very REAL catch-22… there is no “myth” to my expe­ri­ences or those of oth­er peo­ple who live with men­tal illness(es).nnOut of curios­i­ty, what it your back­ground or cre­den­tials that inform your opin­ion that “men­tal ill­ness is a myth”?

  • dayna says:

    Hi, This is a good post, indeed a great job.. You must have done good research for the work, i appre­ci­ate your efforts.. Look­ing for more updates from your side.

  • Megs says:

    I wish i could have got a chance to read the let­ter my late bf left maybe then i would­v’e had some kind of clo­sure :( *sigh* i miss him so much

  • Rebecca Ashley Fournier says:

    I am study­ing Vir­ginia Woolf for my Eng­lish Fic­tion Writ­ing Class, how­ev­er, I work in the men­tal health field. I know for a fact that Bipo­lar with Psy­chosis is a diag­no­sis that can be giv­en to clients, many of which with symp­toms like V.W.‘s have been described. How­ev­er, we weren’t there, so its best to not ana­lyze it. Just read this piece for the very inter­est­ing last piece of prose to be writ­ten by Vir­ginia Woolf.

  • cat says:

    I came to read this pow­er­ful let­ter upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of Mike Tyson.

  • Observer says:

    I was hop­ing to find the haunt­ing words from Vir­ginia Woolf’s pur­port­ed sui­cide note that ends the movie “The hours,” in which she thanks Leonard for lov­ing her: “Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.” Or do these words come from one of her oth­er sui­cide notes?

  • nectarina says:

    Men­tal ill­ness is as much of a myth as the idea of some­one being an artist. These are con­structs from our social envi­ron­ment, and are only valid with­in its con­text. Some­one who can’t cope with the ways of soci­ety will be called men­tal, some­one who makes a liv­ing out of being men­tal will be called an artist.

  • Babylon says:

    Vir­ginia Woolf’s final let­ter to her hus­band is a legit­i­mate lit­ter­ary doc­u­ment to my point of view. Although trag­ic in its tim­ing… It is not an act if fic­tion but a very bio­graph­i­cal piece and in a way it puts all the lit­tle bits of her that she let go in her work.… This let­ter is extra­or­di­nary for it con­veys extreme clar­i­ty about how she feels about her ill­ness and the pain it inflict­ed on her… All what she had left is her end­less love for her husband…how beau­ti­ful that is, how trag­ic to not feel that you are liv­ing only through some­one else… I com­plet­ly under­stand her anguish and her despair…

  • Peter Ross says:

    i think she died from bad pen­man­ship — i want­ed to kill myself try­ing to read it

  • I am a long time fan and feel the cur­ing men­tal dis­eases is as impor­tant as the cur­ing of can­cer. Hugs, Bar­bara

  • browneyedgirl says:

    She was­n’t mad. She was oppressed. When you are trapped and iso­lat­ed all sorts of things hap­pen. Women at that time had no free­doms all that they did was through the choice of the men in their lives. Her mad­ness she thought was through her own fault and as she explains she was a bur­den to her hus­band. The cul­ture that she lived in viewed women as such a bur­den. I would argue her sui­cide was the result of her lack of free­dom and oppres­sion as a human being. No per­son as bril­liant as she was could deal with such a low exis­tence.

  • Lily Whyte says:

    Sad to know those words were not fic­tion. They came from the heart & mind of a per­son who was tor­ment­ed by her expe­ri­ences with her past crises and the fear of the new one. Just sad.

  • Faheem says:

    Men­tal ill­ness is a myth and i am sure that you have it …

  • Marketing LaurieM says:

    I am from a province in which there are so many plea­sur­able pas­times giv­en to men. But only men main­ly. There is strict evi­dence reveal­ing Schiz­o­phre­nia. I would call it just as I do hap­pen to view it. I’m impar­tial. It’s just an ill­ness.

  • Sylvan says:

    All writ­ers hear voic­es. Words ring like bells. It’s a shame when one is too trou­bled to learn to chan­nel them.

  • Yell says:

    Per­son­al­ly I think she strug­gled with hor­mones, the way she said “I feel we can’t go through anoth­er of these ter­ri­ble times” sug­gests to me she had a cycle of which became to much to bare. Obvi­ous­ly recur­ring. Could of played a major roll in V.Ws life. Thou­sands of woman com­mit sui­cide and a lot of cas­es to this day can’t iden­ti­fy the rea­sons which lead to such tragedies. Because a lot of peo­ple are une­d­u­cat­ed when it comes to wom­en’s hor­mon­al bal­ances and what crazy shit they make us do.

  • Gail Garrett says:

    Inter­est­ing to find that Mike Tyson (box­er?) finds the sui­cide note of great interest…enough to rec­om­mend it.

    Schophre­nia, faith, the here­after, the over 450 oth­er plan­ets found recent­ly, all forms of can­cer, includ­ing tumors..all faci­nat­ing sub­jects to be desect­ed in the future. By the way…Does any­one know what hap­pened to Muhammed to change his per­son­al­i­ty? He was a kind preach­er in Mec­ca and cold blood­ed tax­ing author­i­ty in Med­i­na. Yes…I for­got to men­tion how men­tal con­di­tions can affect more than those near by. They can affect the entire world. Look at Islam. Voila. ..ter­ror­ist.

  • Gail Garrett says:

    For most of the his­to­ry of the plan­et women could not legal­ly own land. If you were born a man in a wom­an’s body…you would need to mar­ry in order to have own­er­ship. Was that the case with Vir­ginia? Maybe there was more to Vir­ginia than just being a gay mar­ried woman. Maybe she real­ly liked, or even loved , her hus­band, but would always be attract­ed to women. Maybe she went mad every time her long term female lover fell for anoth­er woman. Maybe her heart was sim­ply bro­ken.

  • cowgirldiva says:

    Peo­ple who kill them­selves are pro­found­ly men­tal­ly dis­turbed…! How­ev­er, soci­ety now rec­og­nizes sui­cide as a legit­i­mate way to die. It is known as “death by sui­cide”..!

    Los­ing a loved one to sui­cide is extreme­ly and unspeak­ably sad for the peo­ple left behind because they invari­ably think that there was some­thing they could do to pre­vent it..! Once some­one has seri­ous­ly decid­ed to kill them­selves, there is noth­ing you can do to save them. They are deter­mined and will find a way regard­less of what we do to try to help them.

  • cowgirldiva says:

    Peo­ple who kill them­selves are pro­found­ly men­tal­ly dis­turbed…! How­ev­er, soci­ety now rec­og­nizes sui­cide as a legit­i­mate way to die. It is known as “death by sui­cide”..!

    Los­ing a loved one to sui­cide is extreme­ly and unspeak­ably sad for the peo­ple left behind because they invari­ably think that there was some­thing they could have done done to pre­vent it..! Once some­one has seri­ous­ly decid­ed to kill them­selves, there is noth­ing you can do to save them. They are deter­mined and will find a way regard­less of what we do to try to help them live.

  • cowgirldiva says:

    Peo­ple who kill them­selves are pro­found­ly men­tal­ly dis­turbed…! How­ev­er, soci­ety now rec­og­nizes sui­cide as a legit­i­mate way to die. It is known as “death by sui­cide”..!

    Los­ing a loved one to sui­cide is extreme­ly and unspeak­ably sad for the peo­ple left behind because they invari­ably think that there was some­thing they could have done to pre­vent it..! Once some­one has seri­ous­ly decid­ed to kill them­selves, there is noth­ing you can do to save them. They are deter­mined and will find a way regard­less of what we do to try to help them live.

  • Alii Scott says:

    In all these respons­es I am read­ing, there is no empa­thy or under­stand­ing of that actu­al feel­ing called depres­sion. A bet­ter word is pain. Emo­tion­al pain that can not be end­ed with any pain killer you might like to pop. Pain of iso­la­tion, pain of unend­ing lack of joy, pain of no laugh­ter, pain of nev­er feel­ing loved, pain of being dis­aproved of,and pain of being .crit­i­cised con­tin­u­ous­ly. Yes the colours of the land­scape may be beau­ti­ful, but us sad humans need to share our thoughts, it is a kind of oxy­gen for us. Not dis­sim­i­lar to hors­es need­ing the reas­sur­ing com­pa­ny of their own kind. Being out of sync with any­one close by cre­ates that black hole of iso­la­tion.

  • Janet Cousins says:

    Such haunt­ing mem­o­ries by and from a bril­liant author

  • BLONDEBITCH says:

    I came here from ‘All the Bright Places’

  • angel 471 says:

    love u for­ev­er vir­ginia. miss u. hope u are in a bet­ter place

  • Tom Fuller says:

    Men­tal ill­ness is a myth?? For peo­ple, pos­si­bly, in Cal­i­for­nia, where men­tal ill­ness is the norm. And a few oth­er places. But men­tal ill­ness is very real. I am kin to some­one who suf­fers from schiz­o­phre­nia, and it is all too real It’s not under­stood, but it’s real. I mean, how else could have so many peo­ple have elect­ed Barack Oba­ma for pres­i­dent?

  • Bipolar says:

    Any­one who says that men­tal ill­ness is a myth does not know what they are talk­ing about. Just talk to me for an hour when I am not tak­ing my med­ica­tion. I will stay in bed for two weeks straight dur­ing my low times and can­not move due to the depres­sion. Then with­out warn­ing I will go through a severe high where I can­not sit down, I can’t stop talk­ing and I do not sleep. It’s exhaust­ing and as it is hap­pen­ing I try to tell myself to stop but it’s impos­si­ble. It’s like try­ing to tell some­one with a cold to stop snif­fling. Thank gawd I live in a day and age where there is help avali­able. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Vir­ginia did not have the help avail­able to her that we do now. But if she did take meds she would­n’t have writ­ten such beau­ti­ful works of litature because most of the cre­ative­ness comes when the mania occurs.

  • Another voice in the crowd says:

    The usu­al mix of per­son­al expe­ri­ence, the sharp end, ver­sus the thick­ness of indoc­tri­na­tion which seeks,so dis­pa­rig­ing­ly, with dis­mis­sive, impa­tient words, to decry the valid­i­ty of the expe­ri­en­tial. In the case of men­tal dis-ease, unwell­ness and every plagued epi­thet that can be imag­ined in try­ing to describe it all,there will always be this divide. Those who suf­fer know the ter­ri­to­ry and can recog­nise it at 1,000 paces when they see it. Those who don’t suf­fer but have an opinion.…Why? Why does this afflic­tion, that your judg­men­tal­ism con­firms you have no knowl­edge of, cause such vehe­mence in you against the suf­fer­er? Why this con­di­tion? What, pre­cise­ly, is it that you fear so much?

  • Also another voice in the crowd says:

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly fear itself is what makes us human

  • Katie says:

    She did­n’t sound like she was in that much emo­tion­al pain she sound­ed con­fused by spirits,speaking to her, taunt­ing her they dri­ve thou­sands of peo­ple to suicide.I know what’s that like because I have schizophrenia.The soon­er the west acknowl­edges spir­it the bet­ter off they’ll be.Tradtional soci­eties have much much high­er recov­ery rates for schiz­o­phre­nia etc etc because they treat it like a spir­i­tu­al ill­ness.

    Im quar­ter African,I dreamt sev­er­al times that I was a shamaness/healer in my tribe before any of my schiz symp­toms started,so all the things that end­ed up hap­pen­ing to me visions etc made com­plete sense.Shaman and heal­ers are sup­pose to have a rela­tion­ship with the otherworld.Instead in the west it was all reject­ed, I was heav­i­ly med­icat­ed to the point that I suf­fered brain dam­age try­ing to taper off the med,that’s how much these meds ruin and cause depen­den­cy in your brain.

    I’m with the oth­er poster volchek,she was plagued by spir­its and because in the west there are no longer heal­ers or shamans (though there was once) she had no help and sui­cid­ed just like mil­lions of schiz­o­phren­ics do every­day.

  • Bud says:

    All to often some of our most tal­ent­ed and beau­ti­ful peo­ple are tak­en from us for what­ev­er rea­son, to anoth­er dimen­sion per­haps?
    It does seem how­ev­er that when we are endowed with cer­tain excep­tion­al attrib­ut­es we are def­i­nite­ly lack­ing in oth­ers that longevi­ty of life requires.
    Sad but I believe this to be true. (most of the time)

  • Mani says:

    dis­gust­ing you and all your writ­ing bawl shit

  • AJ Stephens says:

    Sad­ly, this atti­tude of yours that many share keeps peo­ple from effec­tive treat­ment. Spend­ing time with peo­ple who have bi polar dis­or­der dur­ing those times when they are off their meds and also dur­ing times when they are tak­ing them and fol­low­ing their doc­tor’s advice will quick­ly change your per­spec­tive. Sci­ence is not per­fect, it is a process of learn­ing but it has made amaz­ing strides in the treat­ment of so very many ill­ness­es, which I think you may be tak­ing for grant­ed right now, where­as mys­ti­cism, in all of the time it has been around has cer­tain­ly nev­er near­ly wiped out small­pox, or polio or tur­bur­cu­lo­sis like sci­ence has, which is real­ly just the study of nature.
    So,back here on plan­et Earth, I much pre­fer my bi polar and schiz­o­phrenic friends when they are ON their meds, attend­ing appoint­ments and lis­ten­ing to their doc­tors because they suf­fer less. Bot­tom line.They suf­fer less.

  • Last says:

    I’m so sor­ry.

  • Camden says:

    I agree with all of you it’s sad yes but it was need­ed she felt pain and hurt and dis­traught like some­body who was tired enough to feel her world col­lid­ing down she knew that that was her need to let this pain go not nec­es­sar­i­ly get bet­ter but go away and nev­er come back. She felt as she was not need­ed in this world to her hus­band or any­body that ever loved her she was sad that she was going to leave but it need­ed to hap­pen and it did it’s almost good because Ashe end­ed her pain not being weak but strong enough know­ing she was going to put some­body else in pain that is strength and pain put togeth­er

  • Roseli says:

    To:
    Peter Ross, thank you for the most won­der­ful laughs; your com­ment had me in tears…😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣😂

  • Elisabeth says:

    She prob­a­bly had Asperg­er’s syn­drome and cyclothymia.She was total­ly sane.

  • shivangi sharma says:

    amaz­ing work
    keep it up :)

  • Jacqui Bourne says:

    Using lan­guage as “You’re an idiot” debas­es this dis­cus­sion. It is not help­ful.

  • Charles says:

    I don’t think you would feel that way if a Doc­tor wrote you a pre­scrip­tion for non ter­mi­nal syphilis.

  • Lydia says:

    Please con­tact me cat!

  • RangerStation says:

    What a tragedy, such a big loss. It’s a shame no one was there for her at the end.

  • Matthew says:

    I came across this web­site after lis­ten­ing to this. Worth a lis­ten. Max Richter is quite the com­pos­er. Have a lis­ten:
    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiN-7mukU_RGKZTh_YAb8D335VZU6YtOM

  • Harper Edie says:

    This is unequiv­o­cal­ly not true. I have Bipo­lar 2 & was brought up in a reli­gious fam­i­ly that cat­e­gorised my symp­toms as demon­ic pos­ses­sion. It was a puni­tive & ulti­mate­ly futile attempt at treat­ing some­thing that is neu­ro­log­i­cal with spir­i­tu­al inter­ven­tions. How do I know that? When I was diag­nosed & found the right med­ica­tion com­bi­na­tion, I’ve remained episode free for near­ly a decade. This, com­bined with ther­a­py, has allowed me to have a sta­ble, reward­ing life; a career & be able to raise a child. I will nev­er stop tak­ing med­ica­tion, or hes­i­tate to try new ones, if god for­bid, I relapse for what­ev­er rea­son. Please stop per­pet­u­at­ing this non­sense. It’s dan­ger­ous, unin­formed & ulti­mate­ly unhelp­ful to any­one strug­gling to fight a com­plex & often dead­ly dis­or­der.

  • Jeon says:

    Me read­ing a sui­cide let­ter before writ­ing mine .

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.