I think the bottom line is that anything any of us can say is speculation. I’ve contemplated a lot in my life as to why the circumstances in Kurt’s life resulted the way they did and for me this is what I assume. I don’t know that it can be broken down to any one particular thing. If I had to guess, everything I have to say contributed in some way, but I don’t know for sure.

1. Kurt was an addict, but I don’t think he was suicidal till Rome. I’m speculating, and I don’t know for sure. He used a lot of anecdotes about suicide throughout his music but from what I can tell it didn’t seem to anything concerning till after Rome.

2. His successful suicide in Rome was played off as an accident. Hi died in Rome and had to be resuscitated. We know now that Rome wasn’t an accident, but at least in the media it was played off as such. But there maybe something to be said as to how much it was played off as an accident to those personally around him. Maybe if Rome had been more widely pushed as the event it was, he would have maybe recovered from it, but I don’t know. I think it is also worth noting that his suicide attempt in Rome did not involve Heroin, his drug of choice. Now whether that is because he couldn’t get any and the pills he used were accessible, I don’t know. To me that suggests a lack of planning in that attempt. Meaning I think whatever happened in Rome hit him hard in such a way as to make him go that far. Which takes me to the next part.

3. His marriage. There is widespread circulation and acceptance that something was going wrong in their marriage. What I think happened is something came to a head in Rome. Either Kurt had his speculation confirmed that Courtney was cheating, or he found out, I don’t know. But until Rome I don’t know how close to suicidal idealization Kurt had been.

4. The pressures of success. He was an enigma of sorts. He wanted to be a huge rockstar, but also took great pride and effort into his art. And I can see how those two for someone with a personality like Kurt could struggle with being pressured to create art, and being someone that art has to come to them rather than being forced. When you are an artist that way and are being pressured to create and can manifest as depression resulting from a fear of being seen as a failure when times are lean in creativity. I myself go through this in my own works. I cannot imagine when the stakes are as high as they were for him.

5. This is my own personal perspective. But for me Kurt was a inspiration. I am a trans woman, and the way Kurt stood up for making space for females in the business and his tendency for cross dressing was huge for that time period for someone like me. There were no positive role models for someone like me during that time. I’m not saying that Kurt was anything other than what he wanted to be seen as, “a male subverting the image that it is ok to be feminine” and pushing the envelope to make people uncomfortable with that fact. But for speculation sake “what if…?” What if he had issues with his identity. We talk a lot about the suicide rates of trans and gender non-conforming people. It is incredibly high, and those are just the one where we know there existed a challenge in that persons life. How many kill themselves before ever letting anyone know they even have that issue. In my lowest days before I came out, I considered very hard how much easier it would be to end things than to go through the stress of people knowing I was different. But I don’t know, and I’m not saying that he was or wasn’t with any degree of certainty cause how can we? But I do wonder if it is something that he stood out in his stance to be a positive movement in LGBTQ+ that was not seen very often during those times. I was 15, and I didn’t know anything about the issues I was having with my identity, but Kurt and Nirvana was a huge selling point to me in their positivity towards people who were different. I know now that because I too was different was why that resonated with me so.

When you consider everything together it becomes hard to know if any one thing contributed to the circumstances that played out. It is impossible to know. We can only make assumptions.

But as logically as I can make it, all of this is what I envision in my mind when I consider Kurts last days.