I’m No Sylvia Plath

I read The Bell Jar when I was in high school, like every good indie-alternative-girl does. I read it with a pas­sion that the world did not under­stand me or want to get me. It was in the female indie-alternative-set of BOOKS YOU MUST READ TO HAVE ANY TRUE INDIE-ALTERNATIVE STREET CRED. It was listed right next to The Catcher in the Rye.

Of course it made sense to me then…

We are the real frauds, the liars, you know the whole “The world is full of hyp­ocrites who only care about them­selves. Except me. But I’m the real hyp­ocrite. I don’t even know who I am. Who am I? What is the point of this life? Is there any point?”

Then neu­ro­sis sets in & you go to grad school to deal with it or you drink or you drink in grad school or as a chef or as a writer or behind a desk or behind the kitchen table or maybe as THAT guy at the local 7–11 who never seems to move from in front of the store with his pack of smokes drink­ing from his Coke bot­tle that is only 1/3 Coke and the other 2/3rds is some sub-par rum he got for a few dol­lars. There really is no roman­tic glow around that guy. Turns out there really isn’t a roman­tic glow around heavy drink­ing in gen­eral. I know weird, huh?

Well, unless it’s absinthe & that’s only because it was once banned in the USA. Well that & you drink it in a cool glass. You even get to use a nifty spoon with it. I mean then you’d be hav­ing a love affair with a known bad boy & with cool acces­sories every­one knows those turn out well.

Oh, actu­ally I was mis­taken. Love affairs with absinthe turn out badly as do those with bad boys. It’s licit love affairs with bacon that turn out well. Makes sense, every­thing is bet­ter with bacon (and but­ter and cheese and bacon fla­vored but­ter cheese). Bacon is the good brother, absinthe is the bad brother. Got that internets?

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes.

My real­iza­tions about life.…

Any­way, after you get lost in that sea of iden­tity, absinthe, grad school, and bacon. You con­tinue your love affair with bacon, have chil­dren, fin­ish grad school, deal with a new (or resur­gence of the old) iden­tity cri­sis and real­ize you are NO Sylvia Plath. That’s right I’m NO Plath.

It is NOT just because I haven’t writ­ten some icon­o­clas­tic novel based on my life about the Amer­i­can dream that let me down as a woman when was hurled into and down a dark path of young adulthood.

But mostly because I would be WAYtoo self­ish to even con­sider mak­ing cook­ies and pour­ing glasses of milk before com­mit­ting sui­cide with my oven. I have appoint­ments, the kids & Hubby need me, & I’ve already agreed to be in my friend’s wed­ding at the end of sum­mer. Over­all, it is just too hard to sched­ule in.  Not to men­tion the whole dieing thing isn’t some­thing I’m going to attempt any time soon.  I kind of like (OK, I admit it LOVE) the liv­ing part & I’m afraid of burn­ing my head on my oven. 

See I’d make a ter­ri­ble depressed, sui­ci­dal, poet.

How­ever, my desire for the “WHO AM I?” I’ve real­ized hasn’t left me. If it had left me then I wouldn’t be con­fused (see title of this blog for reminder!!).  I wouldn’t have sought advice from the inter­net or my gro­cer (who by they way is in love with me, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Don’t tell my hus­band or my gro­cer for that mat­ter) about what the future brings.

So, thank you read­ers & kind peo­ple of the inter­net for your advice. If you didn’t real­ize it this post is my painfully awk­ward attempt to say it helped & I appre­ci­ated it.   Hav­ing oth­ers share there sto­ries, advice, and just remind you that it will hap­pen in all good time. I’ve also greatly appre­ci­ate every­thing & all the sup­port from the last 6 months.

Maybe there’s hope for me after all, although you might be won­der­ing if that’s pos­si­ble given this post may have made lit­tle sense. Unless you are drink­ing absinthe then it prob­a­bly made per­fect sense & I also offended you, given the love affair you two are hav­ing.  I’m now off to rename one of the chil­dren bacon not because of any advice I got here but because “bacon tastes good”… (10 points to the per­son whose seen that required indie cred movie & lists it in the com­ments, come on you know the movie).

Tagged as: humor, me, sylvia plath makes better cookies than me, writing