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...
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
We've all lived through something horrific, but the strength and beauty and knowledge that we're going to win eventually is what keeps me going.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
For the sake of a dying, suffering world count the cost, pay the price and set the captives free
And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast, And been bow'd to the earth by its fury; To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury - Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime, The regrets of remembrance to cozen, And having obtained a New Trial of Time, Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
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