I AM
AMYEM
English Major, lifelong learner, impractical perfectionist.
Painting: Iris Fields - Paul Chester
|
Painting: Iris Fields - Paul Chester
|
High school was painful. There's that joke that's been going around on twitter lately that says something along the lines of "every person who was depressed in high school was attached to their English teacher", and I've never felt more called out. My senior year of high school, one of the English classes I took was about social issues in which we looked at primarily mental health in society. We read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Our final project included doing a multi-genre research project in which we could choose the subject. Now, after reading those novels I was pretty entranced in the mental health theme. I already am enthralled by mental and mood disorders and have a close connection with depression and anxiety and suicide. For the research project I did an infographic section on depression, a photo portfolio of what it is like to live with depression, and I wrote an original story loosely (or maybe not so loosely) based on my own life and excruciating turmoil I was living in, all through my protagonist Margaret. We all had to share a portion of our project to the class. I was excited - I love to write and it is my passion and the thing I am good at, and everyone needs to know that. But as I held my binder in my hands and sat in front of the class to read the tiniest excerpt, my hands were shaking and my voice quivered. I no longer wanted to do it. I already walked halls thinking people could see right through me. My class was a mixture of strangers and some of the very people who caused this descent. I finished and handed the binder to my teacher to grade, then I'm pretty sure I excused myself to the bathroom to vomit. My teacher had smiled and told me good job. I had looked at myself in the mirror and frowned, thinking I just should have read my opening quote from Voltaire's Candide. "Lady Lazarus" threw me back into high school, but in a different way. One more relateable (but I'm sure that's because my personal and private journal entries from 2017 sound a lot more like this poem). She is raw, she is genuine in not only her desire to die but in her admittance that she wants to - "Like a cat I have nine times to die, and this is number three. What a trash to annihilate each decade." It encapsulates the anger that often comes with suicidal ideation. The weird craving of a kind of revenge to parade around your death as a kind of show to fill others with guilt, especially a guilt of saying it is a miracle when it is nearly an insult to say your longing wish to die that has not been fulfilled is a miracle. God knows the praise of that 'miracle' is short lived and shallow, because all they care about is thinking they saved a life rather than actually trying to. And finally, the descent into claiming the power as your own - "Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware Beware." Because I am going to do this and I won't need the other five lives, only four. Three to fail, but this time the fourth will work. I wish I could have the wisdom I do now back in high school. I wish I could have known about Confessional Poetry. We read The Bell Jar, sure, but I separated Sylvia from Esther. Esther was inside Sylvia, a person that exists somewhere but not quite. A spirit without a body that needs its own vessel to tell its story, like we all do. As I've come out of that dark pit (no thanks to those who said it was miracle in my own case), I wish I could have told little eighteen Amy that even if the kids in my class did separate Me from Margaret, there still would have been pride to take in if it was written with my voice instead of hers. Suicide, depression, anxiety, mood disorders are all uncomfortable. It is excruciating to live with. They could have sat with the discomfort for the thirty minutes I read, as I have to for my whole life. Sylvia knew that, too, and followed it like a religion until she found God, herself.
P.S. - I got an A on that project, so maybe emotional distress is good for something.
4 Comments
10/6/2019 11:00:23 am
1) I also feel really called out by that joke.
Reply
sandra
10/6/2019 02:15:21 pm
Plath's poem was something you related too, and that is what art does. I'm sorry it wasn't good memories but I hope you took comfort in knowing you had someone else who truly knew what it was like to go through that kind of pain.
Reply
Madison Booher
10/6/2019 08:46:04 pm
There is something so powerful about honesty and rawness, and you did exactly that. Thank you so much for expressing emotions that have altered the way you live, I look forward to reading more of your blog posts. Also, loved how you related it back to the poem.
Reply
ariel parker
10/6/2019 08:58:14 pm
I really enjoyed your interpretation of Sylvia - not only from her writings, but also from her as a person. Her poetry is something that could be related by to anyone, even though it was written from a somewhat-specific point of view. I think this parallels well with your blog because of the way you interact with her own bodies of work and compare it to your own life - I think Sylvia would be proud of that.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Meet Amy -This blog is to share insights into things I'm reading or studying. Feel free to share your input! Archives
October 2020
Categories |