No. 4: My brother's suicide note
Trigger Warning: Suicide, Mental Health, Drug Use.
Before we begin: Your emotional support and kind words mean the world to me, and I'm truly grateful to every reader for their compassion and understanding.
I've spent considerable time deliberating whether to share my brother’s suicide note, but I believe it to be a significant piece of art in and of itself.
I see it as a raw and honest expression of his inner suffering.
The process of restoring and deciphering it took several weeks.
Through my research, I discovered that his note was inspired by another Polish artist, a connection I will explain at the end of this post.
My brother's dysgraphia made his handwriting challenging to understand.
The papers were crumpled and significantly stained, then flattened out again by him or during the police investigation, adding to the challenge of interpreting his final words.
And, certainly, he was under unimaginable distress when writing it.
By sharing this note, I invite you to see a deeply personal and intimate part of the last moments of his life.
Full transcript
I am at the peak of my happiness and mentally sane while writing this suicide note.
I was tossed around the world.
Everything was poetry.
All my essays are the same.
Maybe because I'm an expat.
How they hate this word.
Neither Spanish, Polish, nor Ukrainian.
I didn’t feel the earth under my feet, the earth, as they say, my own, native, the motherland.
The fact that I write in English had a huge significance in my life.
When I write, it’s not bad, not the worst.
So I write.
I can write and paint for several hours a day. That's a lot...
Who sowed the seed of restlessness and searching in us?
Is it my fault that I began to look at the daytime sky, then the night sky, and the concept of infinity, eternity, the Unknown was sown in me?
Is it my fault that I wanted to defeat evil?
Is it my fault that in these last days I wanted to save all people?
Is it my fault that I worked with words, not in the fields, or in the factory?
Is it my fault that gentle rebelliousness is coming back to me?
Is it my fault that I lost my mind to the extent that I didn't even realize it???
Between us, all my paintings, poems, and prose were prayers to the people.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t often think of suicide as a way out of this hell.
But it was never obvious to me.
There is not a single obvious thing in my poor head.
I was looking for a place on this earth, which I so praised, and I can't find my place,
I can’t, although I so much wanted to.
I’ve traveled half the world, been to too many places.
I was okay everywhere.
I was good here and there.
Me, the shadow of me, is bad everywhere now.
I can't find my place.
I wanted, and even still want, to somehow cling to this world, but I keep failing to do so.
Days pass, and I fail to do so.
What can I do?
Writing has saved me from killing myself so many times, and this time it's nothing, even though I’ve written so many pages.
And I keep writing, this tastelessness, which has completely taken over me, is the worst.
And can’t I meet death?
What is the purpose of human consciousness?
Is it to not use it, to continually, endlessly drown it out?
Is consciousness a blessing or a curse?
It seems that here in this valley, it is a curse.
I was, probably like every person, a world unto myself, and when I was feeling bad, I hid within myself, I had a refuge in myself.
Now I don’t have this refuge.
I don’t have my own, homely world.
I am entirely exposed, uncovered, naked, laid bare.
My great comforter has vanished.
The one who was fearless and who knew everything has disappeared.
The one who stood at the beginning has disappeared.
"Blessed is the man who reaches the beginning; he will know the end, and will not taste death!"
Who am I?
I feel like the son of perdition.
My place is literally full of dust, trash, cobwebs, stains, unwashed clothes, and dishes.
How hard it is to take that one step.
For several days I’ve been getting up and saying to myself, "If I had done it yesterday, today I wouldn't have to struggle anymore."
If only it were obvious to me!
But it's still not clear in the end...
I am dying.
For the sins I own and the innocence I bear,
for the void felt in each soul's despair,
for the void that rends me like paper,
torn, like a newspaper filled with noisy, meaningless words.
For a chance to merge with the Nameless, the Speechless, the Unknown,
for a new day,
for visions beyond sight,
for the phantom of the real,
for death's mystery in fear's tight grip, horror's appeal, and brow's sweat,
for lost truths once clear,
for keys to understanding gone, with a glimmer of hope that if the seed shall die, it blooms yet.
For the loneliness of dying,
for all flesh is but a corpse,
because it’s hard, terrible, unbearable,
for the chance of transformation.
For the misfortunes of my own and others, which I carry on and in myself,
for it all seems a dream, a nightmare,
for it all seems untrue,
for it all seems an Infinite Jest,
for it all decays here, in this nest, nothing lasts but the longing for permanence.
For I am no longer of this world, and perhaps never was,
for no salvation seems to await me here,
for my earthly love has ceased to be,
for sic transit gloria,
for I am very tired, indescribably exhausted,
for I have suffered enough,
for I have been, although it happened in madness, most literally crucified, and how badly it hurt me,
for I wanted to save all the people and the whole world from all evil, but I failed,
for it seems there's nothing left for me here,
but I don’t feel cheated, which would allow me to persist rather than die; to persist and look for the guilt, maybe in myself; but I don’t feel cheated,
and whoever can persist in this world - let them persist, and I wish them health, and when their time to die comes - may their death be light.
Because even madness was not spared me,
because everything hurts me terribly,
because I suffocate in this cage,
because he who sleeps does no harm to anyone,
because I understand non-being and non-doing,
because I love my brothers and sisters, and I love all people,
and I do not condemn them for anything,
because I stood at the beginning and I will stand at the end and I shall not taste death.
Editor’s note
After in-depth research, I discovered that this suicide note is an homage to a suicide note left by a Polish novelist and poet Edward Stachura.
Edward Stachura also committed suicide by hanging himself after an unsuccessful attempt of cutting his veins.