Inspirations: Sylvia Plath
Alice Scarlet Death
Sylvia Plath was a mid 1900’s author and poet. She committed suicide in at the age of 30. If I had never read her seminal work, The Bell Jar I would not be alive today.
CW: talk of suicide, overdoses, and rape
When I was a junior in high school I was suffering from depression. All the anti-depressants they were putting me on were making me sick. I didn’t want anti-depressants. I didn’t want a therapist. My mother and step-father forced that upon me.
I was still getting used to the high school that they had just built. They drew in from three different schools, and I only recognized a handful of people from elsewhere. It was difficult adjusting. People were mean to me at first. Then people were nice to me as a joke. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
I was also suffering from what I found out later to be called Intermittent Explosive Disorder. This is mostly defined by very brief out-of-body rage fits. Originally it was defined as physical but has since been upgraded to include yelling.
I had episodes of IED, well, intermittently throughout high school. My mother and stepfather (heretofore known as parents) would just shame me and tell me how disappointed they were. I tried explaining that I didn’t know what happened or what came over me, but they didn’t believe me.
At the end of my sophomore year, I had one of these episodes after my mother started hitting me after I told her off about religion and not wanting any part of it. She hit me first, I ‘blacked out’ and hit her back. This happened three times. I didn’t feel like I was in my body at all. It happened so fast. All I could infer was that I was slapping back as if it were a step or two above a gentle arm nudge. She kicked me out of the car. I had to walk two miles to get back home.
She also filed a suit against me. I had to go to court. My stepfather told me to lie to the judge and tell him that I hit first. And that’s a lie I’ve been living with even to this day.
In high school, it was still a fresh cut. I was ravaged by the fact they just said I had depression. Said I lied on the MMPI just to get attention. (Yes, I was trying to tell them something was wrong!) I knew if I spoke out about lying to the judge I’d probably face perjury charges. Trying to live with all this trauma, going to school, and taking medicines that made me feel like I wanted to vomit 24/7 was not making for a good year. Oh, and random drug tests from my probation officer.
Side note: That probation officer was the only thing keeping me motivated. He kept telling me that he didn’t understand why I was there, and that I seemed like a good kid. I was also suddenly tasked with getting employment.
This was also around the time when I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder to which my therapist said, “You have a personality there is no cure, you just have to change your personality.” Granted it was 2003, I don’t know if DBT was widely available then.
I overdosed on zoloft once, and I was taken to a Christian psych hospital, and was in the ward for about a week. I was raped by my roommate there. As if I didn’t feel enough shame already.
All of this. It was just too much for me. I wanted to die. I thought about it every day. People in my family were scared enough of me that I wasn’t allowed to sit in the front seat for over a year.
My mother was the director of disabilities at a community college and wouldn’t even believe me about my mental illnesses.
By this point, if you’ve already read The Bell Jar then you’re probably seeing a lot of parallels.
The Bell Jar was about learning how to fit in socially amidst dealing with serious mental illness.
Reading Plath’s book made me feel like I was less alone in my struggle. There was so much pain, so much chaos in my life. I felt like I was no longer alone. It didn’t give me hope to live, necessarily. I was still in too much pain to let that drop, but it did give me some quiet solace, and some motivation to be better.
Plath, at the age of 30, committed suicide.
This somehow made her author-as-character persona in the book much more relatable.
I was young. I felt like I would live forever. And learning the thought processes of someone who fell victim to suicide made her pain more tangible to me.
I could’ve read a book about recovery from mental illness. I needed something much more tangible to give me some hope, some courage.
And after three suicide attempts later. I’m still here. Ever since then I’ve sought out others dealing with similar issues and trying to connect. The more I connected, the safer I felt about expressing what I was dealing with. I have Sylvia Plath to thank not just for living, but for wanting to live better.
