Sylvia Plath Quote
I hadn't slept for seven nights.My mother told me I must have slept, it was impossible not to sleep in all that time, but if I slept, it was with my eyes wide open, for I had followed the green, luminous course of the second hand and the minute hand and the hour hand of the bedside clock through their circles and semi-circles, every night for seven nights, without missing a second, or a minute, or an hour.The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.It made me tired just to think of it.I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.
I hadn't slept for seven nights.My mother told me I must have slept, it was impossible not to sleep in all that time, but if I slept, it was with my eyes wide open, for I had followed the green, luminous course of the second hand and the minute hand and the hour hand of the bedside clock through their circles and semi-circles, every night for seven nights, without missing a second, or a minute, or an hour.The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.It made me tired just to think of it.I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.
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About Sylvia Plath
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College. Plath later studied with Robert Lowell at Boston University, alongside poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962.
Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She ended her own life in 1963.