I find myself feeling like I’m not creative enough. I feel like I’m missing that spark. I will go weeks, months, years even without writing a thing.
I use writing as a coping mechanism. I could read and write at a young age and started then. I wrote a story about the night my sister died and it spread like wildfire to impressed teachers. I could remember the pride I felt. It was therapeutic, even though my fragile young mind didn’t even know what that meant at the time.
Just before that I was being treated for depression for the first time. I’ve spent 25 years undergoing some kind of therapy or treatment. I’ve hit rock bottom. It caused me to fall down so many times and rise back up. Just like Lady Lazarus.
But I’m creative when I’m feeling down. When I feel weak and powerless. Not to say I can’t and don’t write when I’m happy. I do. It’s often about love.
But I found myself still relating to Sylvia Plath. We were both so young when the darkness hit. I was four. She was nine. Over the years we tried to hide our pain. Hide it from the ones we loved. Like her, I didn’t want to be found. She (unsuccessfully) tried to kill herself three times. I’ve been down that road. I know how it feels to want to die.
I discovered her in eighth grade. Something about her poems stuck with me. It was like I was meant to stumble across her books. She sparked a fire in my soul and I started writing again. Daily. About my depression. And it helped more than anything had before. I kept writing throughout high school. I tried writing a novel about my depression. I wrote poems, even had one published. My creative writing teacher was always so blown away by my work (after he found out that I was seeing a therapist, of course).
Then I met my own Ted Hughes. Not as handsome or charming of course. He didn’t have a way with words either. But he damaged me. He didn’t care about my work. I was there for our kids only. I stopped writing. There was no spark. No happiness. Sylvia didn’t survive her marriage. She put her head in the oven instead.
But like her, I rose from the dead. I am Lady Lazarus. I’m on my next life.
But if it wasn’t for her, would I even be writing this? Would I have had that one person to influence me so much? I needed her. I still need her. I needed someone who suffered so much to inspire me. Maybe it’s wrong to idolize someone like her. But I don’t care. She was strong, fierce and one hell of a writer. That’s all I ask to be on any given day.
I’m thankful for her. She normalized me and made me feel like I was not alone. She could be the reason I’m still here, because she made me write every thought I had.
“I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.”
-Sylvia Plath