Are you going to speak ill of me, now I’ve gone? You could try, but nobody will really listen. Once I’m dead, I’ve ascended. You can’t touch me, and you can’t drown me out. I can’t be demoralized, dissuaded or patronized into irrelevance. And I suspect, as well, that your readers might want to hear from me just now. Even if they’ve just heard my one hit playing on the radio in memoriam this week, I think they might like to know why I Did It.

And you would too, wouldn’t you?

Keep reading.

I’m killing myself to draw attention to the fact that you are all sleepwalking into fascism and chaos. I’m killing myself – a white woman, privileged enough to have this tiny posthumous platform – because we are failing. We are all failing each other. The codes that this modern world was built on are breaking down, allowing the worst bits of ourselves to rampage. We’re all hardening, dismissing other people’s humanity with a wink and a meme and a scroll-on-down. We’re too easily distracted, and we’re letting the bastards win. We’ve become desensitized to horrors committed against desperate souls who come here seeking asylum, to the routine demonization of anyone who isn’t white and rich and straight and male. I’m killing myself because the world is getting worse and all those rights we fought so hard for are being reversed. I’m killing myself because we are losing our moral compass. It is not moral, the way we exist together. I’m killing myself because the people we elect to govern us do not even pretend to morals, and are applauded for it. Something has gone badly, badly wrong. I’m killing myself because you, the media, are doing nothing to stop any of this; in fact, you’re fanning it, trying to prop up your own dwindling sales by outrage, mob war and dissatisfaction. I’m killing myself because I want to shout STOP to each and every one of you, and this is the only way to get you to listen.

I’ve tried saying it. A middle-aged woman, especially if she used to be famous and beautiful and young, if her politics are anywhere left of centre, isn’t posh or anything even approaching middle class, and dares to be passionate about something, is too easily mocked to be worth listening to. I’m gambling on the chance that that same woman dead just might be.