Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Read this when I was in junior high or early high school. Loved it them, but couldn’t truly appreciate it until now. Recently watched Sylvia and cried my freaking head off. Read this and did much the same. Knowing Plath wrote it as an adult, reflecting on her youth and college days makes it that much more heartbreaking. There is no place in the world for some of us, we’re broken and won’t fit anywhere. Those of us who shined at school fall flat on our fat faces when stepping into the real world. And watching the movie really opened my eyes, she thought she could be okay, she’d fall in love, have a family and everything would be fine, but it never is. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, it doesn’t get better. Let this be a lesson. Don’t expect someone else to fix you, don’t expect to be repaired. Learn to exist broken, walk on knowing you won’t fit in, make adjustments as best you can, just know that you’ll never feel normal. I’m going to take my most recent reading of this book as a lesson, a lesson to adjust, shape up, learn to fake it, and maybe I can learn from Plath’s shortened existence. I won’t fall for a man, I won’t bring children into this world. And I’ll try not to die, and I’ll try to channel my discontent into some thing of value. I’ll try. I feel so eerily close to Plath. Always have, but moreso now, if possible. I’ll live because she couldn’t. Weird, I know, I’m being weird, but the movie and the book were so profoundly affecting, I need to do something with this feeling. I can’t wallow in my misery, it doesn’t enable me to move forward, and I can’t keep living so very static…

finished reading Dec. 11, 2003