Dead Crush #5

I know this one’s really obvious. Except maybe you didn’t think I could have a crush on a dead woman. You were wrong.

I think about Sylvia Plath at least once a day, and have done so for about 5 years. I believe that I’m leading a life which very closely parallels the one that Sylvia led, except I’m not bipolar, am not a native New Englander, and do not have children. Nor did I marry a stuffy English poet. Here’s what we do have in common: obsessive journaling, obsessive behavior in general, poetry, love of beauty and clothing, love of food and cooking, obsession with our bodies and appearances, desire to live as an outsider, fear of life as an outsider, desire for perfect balance of work and love, betrayal by our husbands, procrastination, attraction to abusive losers, fear of our shadow selves. She offed herself when she was my age exactly. I don’t think I’ll do this (I have about 2 months left of 31hood), but who knows. Sylvia may decide that I should (this is not a cry for help, by the way—I still need to publish my book and leave this state for good before I die).

What do I think of when I think of Sylvia Plath once a day? Her pages-long description of the pleasures of elaborate nose-picking (another thing we share in common). Her obsession over whether or not to work, and where the money was going to come from if she didn’t work full time. Her pictures. How she got up at 5 am every morning after that bastard left her and wrote like a fiend before her kids woke up, and wrote the best poems of her life, some of the best poems in English. Her mother telling her, in a letter, “You are a child of the universe. You deserve to be here.” Her poems, of course—these lines in particular:

“I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.”

“The dead bell/the dead bell//Somebody’s done for.”

“I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.”

“Love, love, my season.”

“Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” (of course)

“Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air.”

“Eye, the cauldron of morning.”

I think about her fretting over sweaters. I think about her making some kind of stew or cake. I think about her in Spain, England, Massachusetts. I think about her worrying about publishing, the same worries I have.

More than a crush, I think of her as my partner. At 31 she had already died twice. Like the other ones who died, her shadow overtook her, right after she finally embraced it.

Robert Johnson (the psychologist, not the musician) writes that the bigger the creativity in a person, the more overwhelming the shadow. He uses Picasso and others as examples. I have felt very overwhelmed by my shadow self the last few years, because in suppressing it, it caused me to be hurtful to someone I loved, someone who happened to be the one who encouraged the stifling of the shadow. According to Johnson, if you don’t honor and acknowledge the shadow self in a regular ritual, it will begin to control you, until you are all shadow. So now I’m trying to figure out what my ritual is going to be. Because my shadow, unsuppressed, appears to be quite large. In fact, it is not only bigger than the shadows of the people who wanted me to suppress it, it is bigger than all of the actual people themselves. Am I bragging? Maybe, though in the past I would have been ashamed to even mention this, let alone exalt it.

Right now, my ritual is screaming various obscenities at a pillow until I start crying. Sometimes the crying begins before the obscenities come out. Sometimes the crying begins the second I step out of the building where I work. The shadow saying, “Can I come out NOW?” Although that might not be all shadow--there is quite a bit of loss in there right now.

I am pissed. I think the whole thing is really sexist. What whole thing? All of it. Life. I feel like I’m not supposed to have a shadow because I’m blonde and nice. I’m from Iowa. I like dogs and babies. I listen and am helpful. And I fantasize about killing, maiming, and arson. I was born with this stuff. I’m not a bad person. No one ever says to men, "Hey buddy, let's see a little sunshine. Turn that frown upside down!" I can’t tell you how many men in my life have told me, no, COMMANDED me, to smile. “Hey, would it hurt you to smile?”

Yes. It will kill both of us.

(Happy birthday, Sylvia)