Thursday, September 14, 2017

Just an Awkward, Plath-loving Girl...


I think I may have mentioned that I'm learning a great deal about myself in this 38th year of my life.

Mostly it's cool stuff, like that I enjoy running and I have learned finally how to fix my hair and probably most importantly I have learned to stand up for myself and be firm in my decisions, regardless of how desperately I want to please everyone.

And of course, some of it is hard-learning how to really budget, and how to look at what I have and be able to purge away the things that I am not using, to let go of expectations without losing all of my determination in the process.

Mainly, though, I have learned to come out of my shell, and talk to people, and go to football games all by myself, and not feel like everyone is staring at me all the time wondering why I am such a freak. But I am still an introvert at heart, and I relish the time alone that being single allows. I want to be invited to the party, but I don't want to go. Ordinarily. Sometimes I surprise myself.

Why Are We So Unwilling to Take Sylvia Plath at Her Word?, Literary Hub, by Emily Van Duyne

I fell hard in love with Sylvia Plath when I was in college. Her book, The Bell Jar, spoke to my often tangled in depression heart. Sylvia just got me, she spoke right to my soul with her images of scars and death and guilt. I very vividly remember telling my creative writing teacher my senior year of college that I loved Plath and she said, yes, that people my age usually did, and recommended that eventually I try Anne Sexton. Which I did last year, and I loved her immensely.

But reading this article about Plath reminds me not only of why she was my favorite poet when I was a young girl grappling with a great deal of depression, but also of why her poems still resound in my soul. I don't romanticize her death the way I used to-I see too much the children growing up without her to think it the only logical choice-but I still feel that stir, that anger that I read in her poems, that discontent.

Stranger Than Fiction: What Happened After the Bookstore, New York Times, by Remy Tumin

Oh, I love this article. This is exactly what I want, exactly how falling in love again-as very hard as it is to imagine-this is how it should be. It should be awkward and strange and involving all of the books.

I would also like to recommend Top Shelf Text. The blog is very well done, but my favorite thing about Madeleine is that she is exactly who I was at the age of 24. I love following her stories on Instagram because I have never met anyone so much like who I used to be.

I am mostly really loving who I am at 38. I am trying to mentally prepare myself for the notion that this next year will be my final year in my 30s. I am trying to appreciate this shifting that is being done, trying to learn and grow and continue to be absolutely fascinated by "practically nothing."

"Out of the ash/I rise..."

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