Overdramatize it.

"I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is willfully my own?"

- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

I am almost frightened by how much I am seeing my writing reflected in the free-writes of a woman who shoved her head into an oven at the age of thirty to commit suicide. She was born in Massachusetts and would be Mimi's age if she were alive today. The first section of journal entries in the book are from Plath's early college years and the things she writes about are so appropo of exactly everything I am feeling at this point in my life. She is so real and so tangible. But at the same time, she is so frightening because I see this girl who is teetering on the edge of living to live and living to write about it.

I recognize that precipice so readily because I know that to be exactly where I am standing. Writing has always been my escape, my outlet, my own entangled world of words and metaphors and untold stories. And now I've started to live there. It's the vacation that is lasting far too long.

It's days like this when I feel the pull to overstay my welcome in my solitude and literature that I most desperately need people. It gets hard to wrench yourself away and accept the world. I consider writing, in its purest form, to be nothing but an aspect of depression: a need to be away from everything and everyone except for your own twisted mind.

I praise God for my writing moments and when I get the inspiration to embrace the depression/feelings but I also praise Him for blessing me with people who have the place in their hearts and minds to know when I need them to rescue me. Tonight alone: I had Caitlin to talk to about boys. I had Taylor to dance with, fall on the floor with and hug. I had Jordan smile at me when I needed it most. I had Ellie (Brisket) to make silly faces at me. I had Nick playing his amazing music that brightens my day every time I get the chance to hear it. I had Serenity to go get dinner with. I had Alex to walk to Jimmy John's with. And now I have Dana to fall asleep in the same room as.

I have all of these reasons, these beautiful people, why I will never become Sylvia Plath. I am far too in love with these human relationships and the way they influence me as a person and as a writer.