"Everything in life is writable about if you have
the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst
enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
Sylvia Plath
Today is Plath's birthday, so I thought it fitting to post some of her wisdom. Though I'm not sure she believed it, as she committed suicide a month after her book, The Bell Jar, was published in England (under a pseudonym, with very little notice).
I read The Bell Jar in high school, during what I can only describe now as an "emo-goth" phase, where I was full of angst self-injury, and though myself a bit misunderstood. I think it's notable that, even then, I thought the book a little whiny. Although, if I'd written my own thinly-veiled autobiography, I'm sure it would have read fairly similarly; white, middle-class female with a crushing need to "do well" in a chosen field, bright enough to fake self-esteem but not emotionally developed enough to be able to separate self-worth from outside achievements. Alas, though I wished myself a female Holden Caulfield (who hasn't?), I definitely was not.
So then, think not on how she lived her life, but on how she wanted to live it. Be courageous for all the lambs in the world.
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