i know they’re her private journals, and shouldn’t necessarily be used as a rule book of any sort to live by; but being 19 myself, i thought i could gain knowledge from a girl who i assumed would most definitely have more common sense than i do.
i’m almost 200 pages in and am actually growing quickly tired of trying to track the different dates and men and boys. maybe the absence of her father plays a big part in this, but whatever enchantment sylvia has worked up in me is quickly made dull by the beginning of her next entry, which is a complete 180 from the last, in the span of a day (i love him, never mind i hate him, and there’s this other guy).
one day she’s accepted in mademoiselle, eating caviar, drinking champagne staying out late and the next (for no apparent reason) she’s dejected, hopeless. and she says it herself, she has everything and more. and i’m unfortunately not seeing it as “no matter how much you have you’re still empty”, rather than as “this girl has absolutely zero foresight”.
these journals have served only to paint sylvia as an extremely ungrateful person, and unfortunately i’ve gained no insight or found any knowledge to superimpose onto my own life (other than observe how childish and unappreciative one of your favorite authors realistically is)
I think you might have gone into this with a misunderstanding of who Sylvia Plath was.
You’re reading the journals of a woman with depression who eventually committed suicide. She isn’t ungrateful and lacking in foresight - she’s lacking in serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine because depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.
What you’ve discovered is that depression sucks. That you can have caviar and champagne and all kinds of fun and you still feel horrific.
i HAVE depression.
Do you think, like Plath, your depression is why you are very much lacking in empathy for others?
and you are a different person from Sylvia Plath. maybe use this as an exercise in figuring out why you think people only deserve sympathy for their struggles if you deem them worthy or relatable. part of growing from your teenage years into an adult is learning how to actively empathize with others instead of applying your limited perspective to all situations. this is an instance of that. I’m sure if someone read your private thoughts half a century from now they, too, would find things to mock.