I've drank a little too much lemonade, and now am uncomfortably full. So sitting here for too long may be a silly thing to do.

I ran into Sylvia Plath today. Not literally of course, there's the whole oven thing and all, but bear with me. Sylvia and I ran into one another in Literary Studies, how appropriate, when I was asked to read this stanza of "Daddy":

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

Suddenly it hit me all at once, that Sylvia's first attempt at suicide was the summer after her junior year in college. She overdosed on sleeping pills. This is when Sylvia and I ran into one another. I looked in her eyes, so like mine. We smiled sad smiles at one another. Her hand took mine and we sat like that for a moment. I wanted to say something to her, but she shook her head at me, then she got up and walked away. Yes, Sylvia and I had quite a moment, nobody in Literary Studies even noticed.

If you never knew, Sylvia Plath was bipolar. She is famous for sticking her head in the oven, but it is her first attempt that I am interested in. It is the similarities between our lives, our timelines that shocked me into our brief meeting today. I feel very sorry for her, very sorry for both of us. I of course, am nowhere near as brilliant as she, nor should I hope to be, but when she held my hand for that brief moment today, I didn't feel the "famous poet" I felt a desperate young woman. I'm so sorry Sylvia, someone should have loved you better in life...