The summer I turned 17 was the beginning of an age where I would feel alone and lost, derailing my train of thought into an abyss deep within my consciousness. I did not understand what happened for things to turn out the way they did—I had lost every control of my impulses and thoughts to a superior “being” inside my mind. I resorted to literature, mostly poetry, and stumbled upon the works of a woman who would write of bell jars, tulips, and the torment of being alone with one’s thoughts. What came out of this discovery was an age of fascination and interest in studying the works of a woman who could convey the feelings of desperation and melancholy that I could not brush off my shoulder into coherent sentences. In her tragically-shortened life, Sylvia Plath went on to publish two collections of her poetry, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, and one novel, The Bell Jar, which was released precisely a month before her death.
Her poetry is categorized as confessionalism, a style which focuses on personal experiences and thoughts. The fact that her poetry, like several others that fall under this genre, is raw and as honest as a mirror attracts the audience because they, too, can relate to what she felt; to me, that is what is heartening about her work. Like many other melancholic young women, I felt the pain of what she had experienced as my own, and for once in my teenage life, I did not feel alone.
As I approached an age where I would have to “decide” my future (as defined by HS teachers and parents alike), The Bell Jar provided a passage that would narrate my uncertainty towards my future:
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
As the following four years passed, I was able to move on from my teenage angst. My path towards adulthood started out foggy, and although it’s still raining, improvement is underway. Her way with words still takes me to a place where I was starting to experience love and felt defenseless with my left foot in adulthood and my right one in a teenage haze.
Now 20 years old, I’ve come out of my way into researching more female writers with similar themes, forming my imaginary round table composed of witty, unapologetic, and melancholic women. Plath has encouraged me to take a deep breath and listen “to the old brag of my heart, and realize that I am. I am. I am.”
Thumbnail image taken from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.