Story "Living more than 25 years is foolish"

[Michelstaedter]

Mommy: Cali, 1975.

One day you promised me that whatever I did, you would understand and agree with me. Please, try to understand my death. I wasn't meant to live longer. I'm incredibly tired, disappointed, and sad, and I'm sure that with each passing day, each of these sensations or feelings will slowly kill me. So I'd rather get it over with.

I have nothing but love and sweetness from you. You've been the best mother in the world, and I'm the one losing you, but my act isn't a defeat. I have everything to gain, because I'm convinced I have no other way out. I was born with death inside me, and all I do is get it out to stop thinking and be at peace.

…Just remember me. I'm dying because by the time I'm 24, I'm an anachronism and a nonsense, and because since I turned 21, I haven't understood the world. I am powerless in the face of financial relationships and relationships of influence, and I cannot resist love: it is something much stronger than all my strength, and it has shattered them.

I leave something behind and die peacefully. This act was already premeditated. You premeditate your death as well. It is the only way to overcome it.

Dearest Mother, if it hadn't been for you, I would have died many years ago. I have had this idea since I was a child. Now my reason is lost, and what I do is only to stop the suffering.

Your Andrés
This letter is from an attempt at CTB by a writer named Andrés Caicedo, who a year later achieved his goal by ingesting several séconales. I'm sharing it because, as I said in a previous post, I've been obsessed with the idea of CTB, and I've found this writer's work fascinating. It's not available in English, but at least in my language, I can say that most of it is compiled from letters, a diary, and some miscellaneous writings that he organized into a pair of books called "My Body is a Cage" and "The Story of My Life."
For me, his life was very important because of his consistent attitude and because I finally identify with him in many ways.

Long live Andrés forever!!!!

 

[IDontKnowEverything]

I checked and it's as you said, there are no English translations available and now I regret letting my Spanish fade from the languages I know I'm certain I would really have loved reading some of the things he wrote.
Regardless, thank you for this post!

 

[SuicideKitty]

Unrelated but big kudos for Mainländer on your pfp. I still don't know how he lived to be 34.

 

[Michelstaedter]

I checked and it's as you said, there are no English translations available and now I regret letting my Spanish fade from the languages I know I'm certain I would really have loved reading some of the things he wrote.
Regardless, thank you for this post!

From here on, I'd like to translate or try to share things related to him or to writers or people who had a certain obsession with the CTB, like me, or who at least showed signs of it. Quotes, aphorisms, some videos, or material that might be in English.
Caicedo was Colombian, so I don't have much information, and here in Mexico, not much is known about him. In fact, I don't remember how I discovered him, but I only know that when I read something by him sometime over seven years ago, I fell in love with his writings.

Unrelated but big kudos for Mainländer on your pfp. I still don't know how he lived to be 34.

It's a long story, mostly because Mainländer began to long for death around the age of 23-24 when a brother of his did the CTB because he didn't receive a letter from him in time and couldn't reply, coupled with an unrequited love and the vision he was forging around the world and existence itself. I think his first approaches were when he had contact with philosophy, particularly with Schopenhauer and from then on his sense of life was to write something around his vision of the world, so although he may have died earlier in some battle between the Germans and the French or the Italians (I don't remember), they didn't let him go because he didn't meet the statutes required to enlist in the army. In fact, there is a photo where he is in uniform, but he didn't make it, hence finishing his work meant working on it for perhaps 3 or more years and he probably would have left sooner if it hadn't been for that.



Fun fact:
It is said that Philipp Batz, aka Philipp Mainländer, hanged himself using the copies of his work "Philosophy of Redemption" that had arrived as a support. On the same day they arrived, he used them to make his own. Andrés Caicedo, from whom I quoted "living more than 25 years is foolish," along with his letter to his mother on his first attempt, was working on a novel that, in the end, arguably the only complete work he wrote that he was able to send to a publishing house called "Long Live Music." On the same day that work arrived in his hands, he also made the decision to do his CTB.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Mommy: Cali, 1975.

One day you promised me that whatever I did, you would understand and agree with me. Please, try to understand my death. I wasn't meant to live longer. I'm incredibly tired, disappointed, and sad, and I'm sure that with each passing day, each of these sensations or feelings will slowly kill me. So I'd rather get it over with.

I have nothing but love and sweetness from you. You've been the best mother in the world, and I'm the one losing you, but my act isn't a defeat. I have everything to gain, because I'm convinced I have no other way out. I was born with death inside me, and all I do is get it out to stop thinking and be at peace.

…Just remember me. I'm dying because by the time I'm 24, I'm an anachronism and a nonsense, and because since I turned 21, I haven't understood the world. I am powerless in the face of financial relationships and relationships of influence, and I cannot resist love: it is something much stronger than all my strength, and it has shattered them.

I leave something behind and die peacefully. This act was already premeditated. You premeditate your death as well. It is the only way to overcome it.

Dearest Mother, if it hadn't been for you, I would have died many years ago. I have had this idea since I was a child. Now my reason is lost, and what I do is only to stop the suffering.

Your Andrés
This letter is from an attempt at CTB by a writer named Andrés Caicedo, who a year later achieved his goal by ingesting several séconales. I'm sharing it because, as I said in a previous post, I've been obsessed with the idea of CTB, and I've found this writer's work fascinating. It's not available in English, but at least in my language, I can say that most of it is compiled from letters, a diary, and some miscellaneous writings that he organized into a pair of books called "My Body is a Cage" and "The Story of My Life."
For me, his life was very important because of his consistent attitude and because I finally identify with him in many ways.

Long live Andrés forever!!!!

he injested seconales? what is that seconal a barbiturate like nembutal? how many ?

just downloaded Michelstaedter Persuasion and rhetoric . he shot himself
and will download the philosophy of Redemption Mainlander

reading both now at the same time . interesting

 

[Michelstaedter]

he injested seconales? what is that seconal a barbiturate like nembutal? how many ?

just downloaded Michelstaedter Persuasion and rhetoric . he shot himself
and will download the philosophy of Redemption Mainlander

He took 60 pills, and yes, Seconal is a barbiturate like Nembutal. He had attempted to do his CTB when he wrote that letter, taking more than 100 10mg valium pills and cutting his wrists. However, he says he couldn't do it because it clotted quickly and the overdose wasn't fatal.

It's a shame barbiturates aren't so easily sold anymore; some singers and actresses used to do CTB with an overdose of barbiturates plus alcohol. If they existed, I would have done it long ago. That's why I regret being born in this time where it's more complex and painful.

Great! Persuasion and rhetoric are complex and difficult, but it's also helpful to watch videos about it where they explain the basics. Mainländer's is more accessible, but you can also complement it with videos and even information, such as that his sister Minna Batz also did CTB years later, as she dedicated herself to publishing her brother's work.

 

[Michelstaedter]

You can listen to it with audio in English.