“Anne, I don’t want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can’t Live It. I can’t even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that’s the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that’s real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can’t, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what’s wrong. I want to belong. I’m like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I’m not a part. I’m not a member. I’m frozen.”
? Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters
As hard as I try, I can’t seem to shake the malaise. It is stuck to me like tar, burning my skin. I scream and no one hears. I know I won’t be the same after this. It seems so all encompassing. I am forgotten. Somewhere there is a me who knows how to handle everything– Who feels young and smart. Maybe she’s a figment of my imagination. Maybe I am too broken to be repaired. I don’t want to burden anyone with my incessant whining over insignificant things. People want fun and positivity and I am not that person anymore. I may not have been that person ever.
