Virginia Woolf wrote her final journal entry on my birthday—March 24.

Four days later, she filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the River Ouse.

Drowning is not such a bad way to go;

I’ve done it twice.

The first time, I lost consciousness as I heaved myself out of the water;

I slumped on dry ground for a moment before waking, drenched, disoriented.

That wasn’t as bad as they make it sound,

I thought in a daze.

The second time, I lay under four feet of water, lifeless, still.

I was between white and blue when pulled out. People were crying

as they gauged my health and age;

they thought I was dead.

“The eyes,” Woolf said,

“of others our prison, their thoughts our cage.”

Perhaps we all have pockets full of rocks, stones that are our lives’ untying,

things which pull us into the darkest depths, weigh us down until

we cannot see the Sun’s rays.

We find ourselves to the world’s opinion bound,

and we cannot seem to break loose—we are attached to that by which we are tormented.

To give up is tempting when it feels like we are only extending the slaughter,

but too high is the price.

Death can come painlessly, I would know,

but what it leaves behind is painful indeed. This stone-filled world cannot afford, you, to lose.

Allow pockets of rocks to ground, not drown, and into life’s trials wade forth.