Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupation. Actually I'm hung up on it.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a struggle with self-destructive thoughts and actions, albeit in a metaphorical manner.
Anne Sexton uses this quote to convey the complexity of dealing with darker thoughts and emotions. By describing her actions as 'innocuous,' she highlights the deceptiveness of such behaviors, masking the seriousness of her struggles. It reflects the inner turmoil of grappling with self-harm while also revealing a certain helplessness or obsession with the concept.
In practice
In a mental health awareness workshop to illustrate the complexity of emotional struggles.
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 most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.
I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many.
Fear not! Stand your ground... the Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.
Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
Now as before, women must refuse to be meek and guileful, for truth cannot be served by dissimulation. Women who fancy that they manipulate the world by pussy power and gentle cajolery are fools. It is slavery to have to adopt such tactics.
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