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Sylvia Plath: The First Attempt

Research Realized - Fifty Pills, Three Days

By JHRPublished 2 years ago 17 min read
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Sylvia Plath: The First Attempt
Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

The following is a research-based but fictional narration of author Sylvia Plath’s first suicide attempt.

Plath was clinically depressed and attempted suicide three times in her life. She was traumatized by her father’s death at the age of 8, and treated multiple times with electroconvulsive (aka electroshock) therapy. Plath lived in a terrifying past, when much less was understood about depression and how to address it, and she sadly did not receive the help she deserved in her lifetime.

Citations are included to support the historical events and texts that the narrative was inspired by; these include Plath’s biography, poetry, and her classic novel, The Bell Jar. There are also references to other literary criticisms written about Plath’s life and writing.

This writing is in no way meant to glorify suicide or suggest that suicide is anything other than a mistake.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of self-harm, please reach out. Someone is always there to help.

AUGUST 24, 1953

It’s cool outside, with the summer tumbling sadly into the distance as autumn claws and grips, wrapping its hands tightly around the month of August. The two seasons push and pull, but summer is already aware of her loss and I can see the light of hope fading from her eyes. I can already tell that tonight will be pleasant; cold enough for a light sweater with a hint of warmth in the breeze. There won’t be any breeze where I’m headed, though… I just need the pills.

I may only be twenty years old but the weight of my soul presses so heavily, the pressures of my failures on my shoulders makes me feel as if I am sixty… Mother won’t miss the pills at all, just like she won’t miss me. She only gives them to me now and again, not keeping track of the contents of the bottle. But I don’t have time to patiently collect them; the amount I need is far too great. Fifty should do the trick. I like the roundness of the number, flexible in its divisibility but still too bold to be easily conquered. Yes, fifty should do the trick. With any luck, she won’t even notice right away that they’re gone, and she won’t find me until long after it’s done. I don’t expect she’ll mourn for me much at all… She’ll always be missing Daddy more, and my disappearance can never compare. After Daddy died we all changed, became empty. Mother was as fragile as a soap-bubble, with skin so pale it was nearly transparent. It’s better this way. (Sylvia Plath - Wikipedia)

Leaves the color of warm maple syrup litter the lawn and their brittle bodies crunch satisfyingly beneath my feet as I place one foot in front of the other on my final path of solitary travel. Each step draws me further from the gravel drive and the fresh tracks left by Mother’s car, and closer to what I truly need. My proximity heightens the awareness of my distaste for the world around me, as well as the world’s reciprocal despair that I have felt so desperately every day this past summer. Even the house expresses its disappointment in me, the aching wood of the floorboards groaning under my weight as I climb the steps of the front porch. Directly below me lies my actual home, where I will finally have the most satisfying rest. The hallway to Mother’s room seems to stretch indefinitely, but there is no hurry in my pace as I am finally close enough to feel the cool brass of the bedroom doorknob. (Brown, 2004)

Reaching into the medicine cabinet is an embodiment of reaching into my future, and I longingly contemplate what I am about to do. Swallowing the pills won’t feel foreign as they slide down my throat and I am no stranger to medication. I’ve been a guinea pig, with all the ways the doctors have tried to fix me. The abundance of mysterious ailments they have determined I have that make me damaged transform me into a problem that must be solved. But as my fingers close around the plastic container, locking one by one in a steely grip, I can imagine the warm embrace they will provide, like a lover cradling me seductively in his arms. I pause to read the label on the bottle: Plath, Sylvia. Yes, these pills were always meant to help me. Even though they rattle nosily in the bottle as I clasp it in my hands, I know that the pills will give me silence. (Brown, 2004)

Downstairs in the basement, it is impossible to tell what season it is; I imagine that it is winter already, and that I am moving the immense pile of chopped wood logs to build a roaring flame in the fireplace. One by one I move the pieces of firewood, and as the stack diminishes, the entry of the crawlspace is revealed. I carefully place the pill bottle, a glass of water, and a blanket on the inner edge of the earth’s hard, packed opening, and then proceed to arrange my body backwards within the space so that I can rebuild the firewood barrier between myself and the remainder of the world. As soon as the last log is in place the light from the basement is snuffed out, and I have to run my hands over the makeshift floor to find the items I have brought with me. I accidentally knock over the pill bottle and cringe at the clattering sound that breaks the silence I can feel my heart beginning to gallop in reaction to the noise, as well as in anticipation of what I will be doing.

I remove the lid from the pill bottle, my hands moving calmly but swiftly as I place the bottle’s lid on the ground and shake the contents into my palm. I begin alternating between tossing the pills into the back of my throat – one, two, sometimes three at a time – and taking gulps of water to wash them down. Initially I try to keep track, but I lose count somewhere around thirty… When both the pill bottle and the water glass are empty I let them fall carelessly from my hands, and i slide myself deeper into the crawlspace. Leaning back against the wall, I close my eyes and begin to wait. (Schwartz, 1976)

I’m having trouble seeing, even though all I am surrounded by is murky darkness. I can’t be sure if this is because there is so little light down here, as I am encircled only by the sentient earth, or if my eyelids are too heavy… and I honestly cannot be sure if they are opened or closed now. The warmth is creeping over me… I am slowly being toasted over an open flame, from a comfortable distance, not close enough to char. It’s blissful, this flame, licking gently at my skin until the sensation is so overpowering, all over me at once so that I am hyperaware and begin to feel nothing at all. My solution is much better than the doctors’; their treatments were harsh, barbaric. Yet even the soothing warmth can’t make me forget the sharp bite, barbed wire forced through my veins, as the electricity coursed through my body on their command. (The Bell Jar – Plath, 1963)

“Their first time everybody’s scared to death,” the nurse told me as she grinned sadistically, leaning her large body over me and attached the icy metal plates to the sides of my head. All I could do was stare up at her in response, as my words had fled me in the same manner as my desire to bathe and eat, the very abandonment that had landed me in Doctor Gordon’s office. Death was exactly what the shock treatment felt like, each flash a great jolt that battered me until I thought my bones would break and the sap would fly out of me like a split tree. By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me… I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet… (“The Hanging Man” - Plath, 1951)

I drifted into awareness while sitting in a patient waiting room. They’d placed a glass of tomato juice in my hand, and the glass felt foreign, overly smooth and slightly warmer than the temperature of my skin.

“How are you feeling?” It was the same nurse from earlier that day, looming over me. I never even noticed her approach me. I still could not speak. All I was capable of was a great sense of remorse and confusion, and I could not understand what sins I had committed to deserve such a punishment. I blinked at her and looked away. “Make sure to drink that juice, now. You can’t leave until you do.” I heard her footsteps retreating.

In the car with Mother on the way home, I stare unblinkingly out of the window, though the passing scenery was nothing but a rushing blur.

“I’ve already scheduled your next appointment… Doctor Gordon things you should come in on–”

“I’m not going back there.” My outburst startled Mother, and she glanced at me with wide eyes, surprised I had broken my undeclared vow of silence.

“I knew you weren’t like those people… I just knew that if you finally put your mind to something, you would fix this,” Mother blurts out, her tension visibly dissipating, as if my mental health was a burden on her rather than myself. “I tried to tell the doctors that this was all a phase… That you would quit this when you realized your little stunt was hurting nobody but yourself. I mean, everybody gets upset sometimes but you really don’t have to be so dramatic about it…” (The Bell Jar – Plath, 1963)

She rambled on but I stopped listening; her words were reduced to an annoying buzz, a hoard of bees reverberating back to me the distaste Mother always seemed to have towards any behavior of mine. Since Daddy died when I was fairly young, I had to depend on Mother more than she liked. Looking at me always reminded her of the husband she had lost… Nothing involving me would ever make her happy and I had accepted that long ago. Mother’s words that day merely confirmed my decision… I will never return to Doctor Gordon’s office. (The Bell Jar – Plath, 1963)

The soothing warmth of the pills that I feel now is nothing like the spiteful stabs of the electricity the doctors gave. How could they ever believe that more pain would be the remedy for the immense pain I had already sustained? So foolish… After several months of continuous loss and disappointment, I am finally able to smile as I am floating gently on the back of the sleeping medicine as it aids me in just the way it should towards a place far away from writing and magazines and Dylan Thomas… Oh, Dylan Thomas…

Last year I became obsessed with his poetry… I consumed every bit of his words that I could find, and I could not help but become obsessed with the idea of Dylan as well. My favorite pieces of his work have always been those that seem to be him speaking directly to me, as if I could ever be so lucky… (Perloff, 1972)

Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight… Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Thomas, 1952)

Dylan always urged not to go gently, to never forfeit, but he was all I ever wanted in the world and yet I could never have him. After all of my diligence, absorbing every drop of his inspiration through his poetic grace, desperately seeking a possibility to just be able to lay my eyes so gently upon the contours of his face… it was all for naught. I came so close, and he never showed up at the meeting I so painstakingly arranged… It was this final disappointment that broke my heart the most of all. I did not want to go gently then; if I could have I would have run violently into his arms, begging him to allow me to be his, and for him to let himself liquefy and ooze hotly into the crevices of my tattered soul, filling all the fissures created by the men before him. But now I am too sleepy to do anything but go gently, and I can almost picture Dylan standing before me, reading my own poetry aloud and praising my skill… and he would gaze lovingly into my eyes, knowing so definitely that every word was penned with him the only thing present in my mind… (Gordon, 2003)

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed, And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. I think I made you up inside my head… (“Mad Girl’s Love Song” - Plath, 1953)

AUGUST 25, 1953

I’m not sure how long it’s been… Most of my body is numb and I know I entered the crawlspace with a blanket and I think it might be on top of me and all I can focus on is the fact that I’m so tired…

The oblivion is swirling up around, transporting me to any memory that swims before me long enough for me to cast a line, tethering myself to the thought and allowing it to drag me along for the ride. I enjoy the journey, like a picture show in extra slow motion – except I can’t tell if it’s me moving slow or the pictures, or perhaps it’s all moving exceptionally quickly only being hidden in this darkness has finally enabled me to think fast enough to catch them. I’ve never been able to navigate my mind as willingly as I can from within this abyss. I can see myself strolling through the library aisles of my mind plucking thoughts off the shelf and perusing them as if I have all the time in the world, because I finally do. There is no rush to read the pages without fully absorbing them before Mother berates me with her displeasure in my disinterested state regarding my less than holy nature. (Brown, 2004)

Mother… the note…

Suddenly I am back in the kitchen, bent slightly at the waist, body rigid as I grasp a pencil in my hand, steadily pressing the lead to the paper to form the words “Have gone for a long walk. Will be home tomorrow.” The last words that I will ever write, and not the least bit poetic. I wish I could revise, somehow make my final words to the world more memorable, and less like the hideous, bland girl that I have been trapped within my entire life. I glance down at my hand, see the pencil sliding from my grasp and try to tighten my grip but my fingers don’t respond. Flexing with all of my might does nothing and the pencil is just a useless wooden stick as it clatters onto the linoleum, the sturdy tip snapping off and bouncing away. I picture myself bowing forward to retrieve it, in the hopes that the visualization will become a reality, but the scene is fading from my sight and the lead of the letters s carefully drawn on the paper by my own hand may as well be carved in cement for all the lack of power that I have now to erase them.

AUGUST 26, 1953

the darkness is back and I think the earth is breathing around me – breathing me in – and welcoming me to her home, where girls like me go when there is no one else that will understand their thoughts

“Have gone for a long walk. Will be home tomorrow.”

the words could not be more of a truth or more of a lie even if I had thought them over with a surgeon’s precision… I will be home tomorrow. Will I be here tomorrow? Here beneath mother where she will never know to look, or here on earth still barely living and hardly breathing

perhaps I won’t be here at all and the blissful oblivion will become all-encompassing and even my raging thoughts will finally be silenced and I will be going gently, oh so gently into the never-ending night for my fight will finally be over because i have lost the energy to rage against anything else

the stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead… (“Mad Girl’s Love Song” - Plath, 1953)

Am I dead? Is this what dead feels like? I can’t be sure because I’ve never been dead before; the electroshock therapy only felt like dying but the pitiless voltage ceased before I could cross the final threshold, although actually dying may have felt better than the helplessness that followed. Helplessness is too weak of a word to explain how I feel now… I can’t move… a momentary panic wells up inside me before I am able to remind myself that this is what I have been chasing what I have been testing through all of the methods I have sought out to prepare myself for this moment

the day when I slashed my legs as wide open as I could bear, only it was never wide enough to let the right amount of blood escape to actually prove that I could do it, only experiencing nausea embarrassment regret (The Bell Jar – Plath, 1963)

or when I thought that hanging myself could be the right way, only nobody ever tells you just how difficult it can be to find a stable ceiling beam and to tie just the right knot so that you don’t come tumbling down to the ground, feeling even more stupid than you did when you first decided to try it (The Bell Jar – Plath, 1963)

I’m not really sure when I decided that pills would be my ticket, but one day I just woke u sure that I know. After that it was just a matter of waiting until I knew that mother would be gone long enough

it’s definitely been long enough and I wonder if they’re looking or even know i’m gone and if mother’s had the chance to complain that it’s my fault that i’ve disappeared, that maybe

i’ve gotten lost and she probably hasn’t thought to check the place where I got the pills but that’s all just as well because i’d hate for them to find me now

i can hear a strange scratching the shuffling of feet on the basement floor? And I still can’t move and can barely breathe and think it’s finally time to stop thinking and fully feel the darkness that’s been pulling me closer, the darkness that’s been luring me – beneath all of these thoughts… and to finally just stop and go gently the way Dylan would have wanted

the way I have always wanted

AFTERWORD

After nearly two days as a missing person, an organized search, and a public announcement of her suicide attempt, Plath was found barely conscious in the underground space directly below her home’s front steps. This was the first of three attempts she made to take her life.

WRITTEN WORKS CITED

Brown, Sally and Taylor, Clay L. (1963). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.

Gordon, John. (2003). Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 27, No. 1/2, Modern Poets. “The Snowman on the Moor.”

Perloff, Marjorie G. (1972). Contemporary Literature, Vol. 13, No. 4. “A Ritual for Being Born Twice: Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar.’”

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar. Heinemann, 1963.

Schwartz, Murray M. (1976). Criticism, Vol. 18, No. 2. “The Absence at the Center: Sylvia Plath and Suicide.”

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About the Creator

JHR

After a lifetime of words read, written, and suppressed... it's finally time to share.

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