I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on personal dignity and the silent acceptance of one's flaws and vulnerabilities.
In this quote, Anne Sexton delves into the experience of vulnerability and the struggle for dignity amidst an examination of oneself. It highlights the internal conflict of accepting the rituals of self-assessment while recognizing the inherent worth and resilience within oneself, indicating that true strength lies in understanding and embracing one’s imperfections without succumbing to external judgments.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a mental health awareness event to discuss self-acceptance.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.
You're beginning to hear the tale of the common man and woman rather than the traditional memoir about the generals who just finished the war or the politicians who just rendered glorious service to the country.
The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.
I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
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