TO: LEONARD WOOLF
Rodmell,
Sussex
Tuesday (18? March 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.
V.
March 28, 1941. After writing that note to her husband, Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse.
I wonder what it must have been like for Leonard to read that? An act of incredible determination is the way I’ve always seen her decision. She seems so incredibly sure. Good old Virginia. Time to reread something of her’s.
Well, it’s awful, isn’t it.
I’ve been reading Afterwards: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf. They are so moving- letters to Leonard from Vita Sackvile West to their cook, girls from colleges saying how much she meant to them and total strangers feeling the need to reach out to him. Really wonderful little book.(In between lots of Nancy Lemann.)
“Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness.”
I’m sorry, but just…fuck. I never get over the intensity of that.
Oh, that just gives me chills.
And to do what she actually did. Drowning??? Just awful. Makes me so sad.
I think it’s an incredible letter. Quite beautiful. Not to send everyone running from me or anything but whenever I think about suicide (probably casually about twice a year and seriously once a year, and my wife attempted suicide before we met) I think this is the kind of letter I would like to leave, one that places no blame on anyone but myself. I’ve known one person who took their life and while there is an understandable anger at the “selfishness” of it as perceived by those left behind I believe that when one wants to kill him or herself they are only thinking it terms of wanting everything to stop, not in terms of hurting other people, which is why I find the letter so moving. I get depressed for long periods and it’s nothing anyone is doing or does. I just start feeling powerless for weeks or months at a time. The reason I started blogging was because of the extraordinary sense of depression and failure I was feeling in my life last year and it continues even now but interacting online has helped in many ways. I just don’t bring it up but this post struck me (and Virginia Woolf is my wife’s favorite novelist along with Forster) and Sheila’s blog feels like a personal space where one can open up so there you have it.
reason I started blogging was because of the extraordinary sense of depression and failure I was feeling in my life last year
That’s why I started blogging, too. I am so glad that you have found that creative outlet that keeps you interacting with the outside world. One of the worst parts about depression, the most debilitating, is how isolated you can feel. You hide from the world, crouching and cringing in the shadows – at least that’s the way it is for me. Even if all I can do is a book excerpt, I still feel like blogging keeps me engaged. It’s been so good for me.
And thanks for being honest. I’m glad you feel safe here. That means a lot to me.
I am so touched by her letter because she seems genuinely concerned for him … she doesn’t want to put him through that again … and the line Emily quoted: “Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness.” The love in that. Yet also the despair.
Even if all I can do is a book excerpt, I still feel like blogging keeps me engaged.
That’s how I am with pictures. If I’ve got nothing to write I put up a picture. It makes me feel good to do it.
This “suicide note” by Virginia Woolf is very poetic and very touchingly intense. The words “Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness” is a heartbreaker. I have been suffering from depression for years, but to contemplate about suicide and carry it out is something I probably couldn’t do. All I want is for my pain to go away. I am so touched deeply by this note than even it was tragic, it was beautifully written. When I saw the movie “The Hours” with Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf and the same note was being narrated at the beginning of the film, I could imagine how depression strikes down deep for all of us depressives. I think people should understand us for what we really feel inside as it is so hard to be suffering from this kind of illness.