 | | ing violent impulses. After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail.
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Up to this point, Whitman had managed to suppress the violent impulses he described.
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| | After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder. I have had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of Excedrin in the past three months.
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Significantly, he did not indicate that he had also taken Dexedrine and Dexamyl or that they could have been the source of his headaches, a possibility he readily shared with others. Instead, he focused on Excedrin, a perfectly legal over-the-counter substance. Here Whitman paused to return the typewriter carriage twice in order to start a new paragraph. He had decided he wanted to die, but he did not choose suicide.
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| | It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight after I pick her up from work at the telephone company. I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationaly [sic] pinpoint any specific reason for doing this. I don't know whether it is selfishness, or if I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment my actions would surely cause her. At this time, though, the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in, and am prepared to die, and I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it. I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible.
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In the most revealing portion of his note, he found "this world" unacceptable, largely because he did not function well in it. His peculiar acceptance of an afterlife, and his notion that life on earth was actually hell, contributed to a twisted logic in which he was
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