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& How Many Sleepless Nights —
The first time I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, I was pregnant with my first child, depressed as hell, and only a matter of months away from completing my MFA. By my standards, I came into the book late, having read most of “the classics” by the time I graduated from high school. But looking back, what I read into that book and what I’ve carried with me has been far more vital than anything I took from Dickens or Twain — most importantly, what I’m willing to do to my body (and mind) for the sake of work.
There’s this moment in the story where Esther returns to her mother’s home to idle away the summer, write, and (at her mother’s insistence) potentially learn the art of short-hand transcription. Plath described the space in which Esther passed her time, which upon rereading was a fairly typical, small room with a desk, and a window that overlooked some shrubbery. But during my first read with prenatal depression that would morph into postnatal depression and psychosis, I somehow interpreted this description as being outdoors. Specifically: I envisioned a shrubbery wall (the kind some neighbors use to separate properties instead of a traditional fence) running parallel with the brick facade of the house… and Esther’s desk shoved in-between.
My interpretation only became stranger from there: I somehow accepted this interpretation of the space, and I imagined Esther sitting in this dark, damp gap between the house and the shrubbery, her sitting and toiling away over her words, eventually rocking to and fro like a figure dramatically contorting in a graphic horror movie, as she slipped deeper and deeper into her own psychosis.
I finished the book when I was only two weeks away from giving birth and approximately 6 months away from graduating. I knew the remaining months would be difficult, having a newborn and fulfilling my thesis requirements, but I had no concept of the gray, dreamlike state I was about to enter.
While still in the hospital, the effects of the epidural still wearing off, I caught my first glimpse of a person out of the corner of my eye. I thought someone must have passed down the hallway quickly or that I had been sleeping, but something somewhere in the back of my mind told me this wasn’t true, that what I had witnessed was real. That someone was out there who shouldn’t have…
