The Journal of Tamara Arianwyn Brooks

Sometime in the early hours of September 6, 2006, Tamara Arianwyn Brooks died. She was killed in self-defense by a woman whom she had been holding captive and abusing for some time, whose name shall be withheld in order to protect her identity. According to witnesses, Tamara had been not only depriving this woman of food and water, and otherwise torturing her physically, but had also been forcing her to do many things with which she was uncomfortable.

In an interview, the woman stated "I would know that I didn't want to do something, although maybe I couldn't explain why. But she would force me. She would tell me that I was just being stupid and paranoid, and not allow me to trust my own judgement. For as long as I can remember she has gotten me into sexual situations that I was not comfortable with. She has encouraged me to trust people whom I felt it was unsafe to trust. Always, in the end, my instincts proved themselves right, and then she would have the nerve to blame me for ignoring them, and say that I was the one who had gotten us into this mess. She wanted people to think that she was strong, that she was coping, and that it was only because of me that we weren't progressing. The truth was I knew what I needed to do to keep myself safe so that I could heal, and she wouldn't let me do it. She said it was weakness." The woman went on to inform us that killing Tamara was her only choice. "She was trying to kill me, although she was doing it more slowly. She wasn't letting me eat. Last night she tried to convince me that I should throw up. I didn't want to, I wanted to fight it. I didn't want to go back to my old patterns, I wanted to break the cycle. She said it would be easier to just let myself be sick, but I wouldn't do it. She was threatening to stop eating again, but we shared the same body, and so I couldn't let her do it. She also wanted to cut. She was always trying to hurt me. Last night I realized that as long as she was there I would never get well. So I killed her. I did what I had to do."

When asked whether Tamara was a symptom of multiple personality disorder, the woman had this to say. "I don't think that Tamara was an actual second personality, unless that was why I used to dissociate. Maybe those were instances of her taking over completely when she couldn't convince me to do the cutting myself. But it's more like she was an imaginary friend who went wrong. She started as a character for a novel, based partly on me, and who I somehow decided that I wanted to be like. I thought she was stronger because she could live a productive life in spite of the fact that we shared the same history. In my mind she became real, a person whom I had the potential to be if I tried hard enough. When I was faced with almost any difficult, even minorly difficult situation, I would ask myself how Tamara would have dealt with it. I didn't realize how many of her decisions were actually wrong, were destructive to me."

Although the woman is fairly sure that she has killed Tamara, some fear remains that she will somehow return. "I may simply have scared her away for a while. Or she may come back as a ghost. But I know now the extent of what she was doing to me, preventing me from ending relationships that I knew were unhealthy, insisting that I engage in highly self-destructive behaviours, always wanting me to do more than I could handle. Just recently she wanted me to take more than two courses this semester, she said it would prove that I was strong, that I was improving. I hope that I'm right, and that she really is gone," the woman concluded.

Meanwhile, she has plans to start a new blog, and has deleted all of Tamara's old entries. She says that while sometimes it was her writing, mostly Tamara would interject into everything. She has saved a few things that were hers, and will post them in her new blog, as friends only entries. "These were things that needed to be said," she stated, "but I only want a few people to know that I was the one who killed Tamara." Mostly she wants to remain anonymous, and to begin a real healing journey, one where she trusts and listens to her instincts rather than suppressing them.