Marilyn’s Last Journal

It’s three years now since i found Marilyn’s last journal and pieced her messages together to understand why she did what she did. Three years since I was crushed with the weight of realization that she had taken her life to be with a family she thought loved her so much.

She may have been mistaken about that, being the most neglected, misunderstood, brushed aside and forgotten siblings of all, within the family of poorly treated siblings … but that’s not the point. The point is that she believed she was loved as much as she was able to love. That is the message from Marilyn it took me three years to understand.

This was page one of Marilyn’s last spiral notebook journal. She was practicing for her GED at the hospital in the same journal. She wrote: “The first few days here I was imagining totally. Now I’m too anxious to do much of anything.”

Marilyn had made remarkable progress in her two years at Brown Schools. Something caused her to completely collapse into schizophrenic delusions and paranoia again and I will always believe it was the marijuana. I saw it make her instantly paranoid every time that she tried to smoke it.

Marilyn hated the paranoia and she knew it was caused by the marijuana. I asked her why she couldn’t turn it down and she had no real answer. She said she felt she couldn’t but she would always try.

She wrote: “I’ll feel the pangs my family did. No other way do I want to be rid!” because Marilyn believed we had all died and gone to the afterlife. She had decided to join us.

She was able to go out on passes with my sister and I. Since my sister’s lifestyle and mine were not the same, we took Marilyn out at separate times as evidenced by Marilyn’s notes above. My sister chose to take her to the homes of dysfunctional family members while I took her out to eat and out to movies, sometimes shopping.

On this page she wrote: “The martians have created an afterlife” The family already knew that Marilyn believed we were all impostors who had been replaced by martians. She must have finally decided that her real family members were now in this afterlife created by the martians.
This is the last page of Marilyn’s journal, September 21st, 1977, the day that she killed herself. It’s clear she intended to go on living and working on earning her GED just hours before her death. There are seven full pages of her math work on this day, nothing more.
this is the last note that was in her folder that came from the mental hospital she had been staying in when she took her life while out on pass. She wrote this note one month before the suicide and asked them to put it in her files. No one ever saw this note that I know of. The first time I saw it was 3 years ago, 40 years after her death. This last note for the files says, “There is pain in my heart for my whole family. I hope to meet them in my after life or if there isn’t one to sleep with them very soon.”

There are approximately 30 pages of therapist notes regarding Marilyn’s condition while staying in Santa Rosa Mental Hospital. The recurring theme was that she was constantly wanting to be hugged and telling everyone that she loved them, wanting to be shown love in return. (copies to be scanned in the near future)

There are even more pages of letters that she wrote to government heads and officials, previous to her commitment to the hospital, asking for public examination of their facilities that studied mental telepathy. Even a telegram, with a receipt, that she sent to Washington D.C. regarding the matter. She was convinced they had put some kind of electronic device in her head and somehow, that by going there she could find it and get it out of her head.

The voices were driving her crazy. She never stopped working to save herself and she was exhausted and alone in the end. Therapist notes indicate they hadn’t a clue of these delusions of hers. They seem to have diagnosed her whole problem as attention-seeking. They did not once mention her struggle with the voices that she never stopped writing or talking about.

This is a poem that Marilyn wrote and sent to her psychiatrist, Dr. Thorstadt … it’s one of the few poems she completed … her last and her best …

A stream is more beautiful, as people’s lives

When it begins to hit rocks and stops running

Depending on how big the rocks are will determine how much the stream will stop.

By this time in my life I think I’ve hit my biggest rock.

…. and she signed it, Marilyn Taylor….. she sent this to him with a note that said, “One birthday present that I’d like is for somebody to make up music to go along with this poem because I mean this with all my heart.”

None of us never knew about this birthday wish. Not even sure if the typed note was ever delivered to the doctor. All of these notes and letters were thrown into a folder with very little order to them, except that it all occurred within the last few months of her life. These were the notes and records that no one ever saw for 40 years, although they lay within arms reach of everyone, except for me, Nancy and Johnny, both of whom are now deceased and sadly, never knew about this box. There were two letters in there for each of them, never delivered. It will break my heart eternally to realize that both Johnny and Nancy had letters waiting for them for decades, sweet letters letting them knew they were important to her, and they never knew of it.

I’m glad that I finally got a hold of her notes to try and do my little sister some justice, although nothing will heal the wound of her loss. She deserved a life and didn’t get it. Another one of the kindest persons you’ll ever have known that suffered from a debilitating disease that begets stigmatization, judgment and misunderstanding.