I don't know how to feel about this book. I chose to listen to it on Audible instead of reading it, and I think the narrator's voice only added to the stinging effect of it all.
I didn't like it , or maybe I did.
I didn’t hate it, or maybe I did.
I was disappointed by it, yet so inspired.
To be perfectly honest, I am not sure how I feel. Uncomfortable, scared, naked, exposed, hurt... Psychological triggering by definition, I guess.
Even from the first notes of the ominous music... It scared me at once. It sounded like the music that comes out of the darkest parts of my mind, the injured but never completely or properly healed thus leaving deep scars parts, the parts I like to pretend are not there anymore. I hated how familiar it sounded, and I could not understand why. Like an old tune that you knew by heart years ago and just found yourself humming along to it as perfectly as though you still hear it everyday... The sensation made me shiver...

Why did I even start this?
An unearthly force drawed my finger like a magnet, clicked purchase, and started playing that dark breathy voice in my ears, even before I had a single chance to decide. It was like I had to do it, like I had no choice. It has to happen, and now.
It started, the bell jar. Read by someone I loathe, I despise, although I have never ever heard of her. I can't even pretend to recall her name. I feel like this would exactly be how Sylvia Plath would sound like if she were the one reading her words to me. It sounds exactly like her, hauty, disgusted by everything and everyone including herself, pained, concieted, self-doubting, self-centered, and darkly brilliant. I know I would be checking her name, eating up her biography, and stalking her and digging up everything she ever did in her life in search of other painful pieces of art. I will look for them, not out of awe, although that should be a word that describes how I feel about her performance, but out of that masochistic need people have to find out everything about someone who has hurt them, or someone they have battled with and lost, and have developed a strong feeling of respect for them because of it. She also sounds like a girl I used to know. Just as breathy, just as self-centered, and just as full of pain, a pain that was caused by things that other people would deem ordinary and easy to live with, only she couldn't. She strikes everyone as a girl who has suffered so much it nearly killed her, only I couldn't stomach it, I detested her fake suffering, it didn’t make me hate her per se, I knew her suffering was real to her, the pain had stung her as sharp as though it was, and that was enough to stop me from declaring her as fake and selfish, bu after figuring her out, I just couldn't love her or like her as much anymore.
Why did I even start this for?
I could have started The Martian, I know I would have loved The Martian, The Martian was safe, The Martian was fun, The Martian was easy, I have seen the movie and loved it.
For the past few years, I have successfully avoided any piece of art that I know might have the ability to hurt me. I have been on a successful streak of light readings, comedians' books, inspirational books, and safe books that I already know everything about beforehand. Even with movies, I have been staying as far as I could from dark dramas that would challenge my emotions too far or get me too involved. I was safe dwelling innocently in my comfort zone, where nothing can touch me too deep, unaware that the bell jar was coming for me. I could stop now and start The Martian, it would be easy. Just one click, and I will be back in my comfort zone. Yet, here I am. Still listening, furious with myself, stopping only occasionally to write this. Why start something I already know would upset my already troubled mind in this particularly sensitive time, not to mention during such a hard flight? Flights are designed for leisurely reading, or listening in my case. I couldn't stop. I keep hoping that, any minute now, my husband would suggest we watch a movie instead. I would pretend to be annoyed at the inconvenience of being interrupted, but secretly be unbelievably glad to be saved from this torture. I can't specifically state what actually hurts me about this book. Yes, of course I was immensely impressed with how it peers into my heart, but not the way I would have had I read it in my college years. And honestly, even today, I can still see why I used to be obsessed with Sylvia Plath. Of course the writing, the language itself is the kind of language that I revel in, it's brilliant and blunt, it seems so simple, yet it feels so rich, and it gets to me. Years ago, I would have devoured a book like this, I would have swallowed every word like medicine and every expression like it came right out of the Holy grail of literature. This kind of stinging piercing language that embodies the suffering of the bleekly depressed is what got me obsessed with Sylvia Plath in college in the first place. It's the the kind of language I wish I could use effortlessly to express myself, the kind of ideas I wish I could put into words, and I know for fact that even if I have a million minds like mine and a million years to do it, I can never be able to create something as masterful as this. Although it would be easier to do so, I cannot sit here and talk about my supposed suffering and lead anyone to believe that I didn't know exactly the kind of experience I was in for by choosing this book. I knew enough about Sylvia and about this particular book to know it was absolutely depressing. I was dumbfounded by some events, disgusted by a couple of descriptions and impressed by others. I was a little bored at times, other times I just wanted that part to be over, but I still couldn't quit, I NEEDED to know what's going to happen. I needed to follow Esther's stream of consciousness at any price, I will know what happens, no matter what.
I hated Esther
But then again I identified with her in so many ways it was absolutely stifling.
A part of me still cannot get over how much I have in common with Esther, the overwhelming need to do everything and be everything all at the same time, the alternating and sometimes even simultaneous feelings of inadequacy, interest, disinterest, and willingness to learn absolutely anything and everything and be good at it. The unspeakable pain of not being able to make a choice and stick with through and through even though it seemed like it was worth dying for at the beginning. All of these fights and turmoil felt so familiar like someone had been reading a diary I never wrote in fear of being discovered and my innermost fears and terrors revealed.
However, I could not mirror the repulsion and loathing with which she portrayed marriage and men the way I would have years ago. Despite having had the same fears she pronounced, I think I am happier now, I have been fortunate and determined enough to not let myself end up in a marriage that is anything remotely similar to the kind of marriage described in the book..
I was also seriously alarmed with the racist undertones that I simply couldn't let pass unnoticed. I know it was a different world back then, but for a serious feminist promoting gender equality and supposedly challenging social norms, I couldn't forgive the many racist remarks and the mundane subscription to stereotypical profiling of anyone who is not white, or specifically not her.
That being said, her struggle with mental illness, repeated suicide attempts, seeing the world from a solitary glass box prison got to me. As I listened, the hidden box where all my dark thoughts, all my biggest insecurities and fears, and all my obsession with death, was being unlocked, one little click at a time.
It was like opening pandora's box, to find ghosts of my old selves coming out to haunt me. To find questions that challenge every part of my current life and interrogate me to find out how and why I got here. Why don't you ever write any more? Why do you fear conflict so much you avoid even the simplest conversations? Why does the idea of being around a lot of people sicken you to the bone? How did you become so uninspired? How did you let yourself be ordinary? Why aren't you writing anymore? How come you don't play music anymore? How come you can't sing? Why don't you ever paint no more? If you miss the stage so much, how come you don't look for opportunities to act? Why aren't you taking your camera around snapping pictures of the wonderful things you see? Why haven't you been reading anything that can remotely unsettle you? How come you don't write? How come you don't write? How come you don't write?
So many questions I have no answers for, it's like torturing a convict for information on a crime he never did or even witnessed. And I can't make it stop, I am not even sure I want to. It's terrible, and it hurts, it punctures holes into my heart and it slows my pulse, but I can't stop, and won't. It's agonizing, and it feels like my lungs are drowning in non-existent bitter salt water, choking me, but I can't stop, and won't.
It's like one of those necessary evils.
I never write when I am happy, I have always known that, I never write when I am happy. Comfort kills inspiration, and I needed the stab... It triggered my hand and it tickled my mind, it hurt, but that's exactly what I was missing, to remember where my muses lived, in the dark locked up boxes of my memory, with the worst fragments of my being. I guess I can go visit from time to time. I don't have to live there, but I surely can visit. If that's what it takes to get my creative juices brewing, then it's probably a place worth visiting and I guess in some way I should be thankful for this whole experience that led me to re-discover these long-deserted districts of my soul.

The Bell Jar - Likewise Book Reviews

91 Reviews