the bell jar

This has been brewing for quite some time. It is a mix of past, present, and potential feelings and thoughts. I'm not quite sure that I can articulate everything that I need to get across but I have tried my very hardest. It is also a godawful long post of my broiling thoughts so feel free to pass.

In my first week of being in Kuwait, I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I'd been meaning to read it for the longest time but I find it interesting that I ended up reading it when I did. It's a great book, a thinly disguised memoir of Plath's mental struggles in her early twenties. I didn't know quite what to make of it as I read it but once I'd finished, I missed Esther Greenwood's narrating voice in my head. 

It is so hard to organize my thoughts about this.

Leading up to the days that I was leaving Manchester (and going to Kuwait and reading The Bell Jar), I became more and more homesick and depressed. And insecure. And doubtful. 

The previous weekend, I had just heard from a former schoolmate that she had gotten in, early decision, to what had previously been my first choice school. My first choice school that had wait-listed and then rejected me this past summer. When I got the final letter, I was expecting it and I thought it wouldn't affect me that much because it had been long coming. But when I heard her fantastic news, something in me broke. A deluge of regret, doubt, stupidity, sadness, came rushing out to engulf and overwhelm me and send me spiraling downwards. All the old feelings of worthlessness and my shortcomings, all the questioning whys and how comes, all the disappointment came rushing back. 

Then I thought, why is this affecting me so much? Why should this even matter to me anymore? And I realized it mattered because I expected that once I got to Manchester and fell in love with England and university life, I would forget the struggle it took to get here. I would forget my misgivings, my failures, my rerouted dreams. Everything would just wash away in my excitement for being where I was. And it didn't, because it doesn't feel right yet.

I haven't gotten over my stupid little disappointments because I am dealing with the biggest disappointment of all. It's not that I am unhappy or that I am too homesick. It's that I feel like I have put myself in the one situation where I feel I am stuck. I feel stagnant, like I'm in Esther's bell jar. I hate feeling stagnant. I felt like I couldn't move forward and, of course, could not move back. 

Manchester has not, so far, been the perfect place for me. I've yet to meet the kind of people I would like to meet, the ones who inspire me just by their presence. I'm not having that much fun. Classes aren't that enthralling either. I'm not experiencing the great city of Manchester like I expected. I'm not feeling particularly stimulated by my existence right now. Whenever I think of existence, I think of a PostSecret that says quite plainly, "I want to do more than just exist." As of yet, I merely exist in Manchester, nothing more.

It took me some time to figure out why and, to be honest, I still haven't figured it out. I think one massive chunk of this whirlwind of disappointment is that I am very homesick. It's taking a lot longer to settle in Manchester than I expected, although I should have understood how far of a distance this move really was. College hasn't started to feel like home yet and I'm not sure how long that's going to take. 

I think another reason is my room. For one, I spend way too much time inside it, curtains shut so that people outside can't see in. I think seeing my room was my first disappointment. It doesn't look like the college dorm room I expected, but now that I've made it more my own, it doesn't bother me as much. But it still bothers me a bit. I think it's the high window and the fact that the majority of my light comes from the fluorescent light on the ceiling. My hall itself (the whole dorm) makes me feel a little cramped and disconnected. The common room isn't very common and it's not very active and social. It's too small. I thought that by living in such a small dorm, I'd feel more comfortable in such a huge university but now I wish I'd gone somewhere bigger. And I don't often notice the hugeness of the university even though I would have liked to go to a smaller one. 

Lastly, I've used the same phrase in every single one of the previous paragraphs: 'like I expected.' I think I expected too much and then wasn't satisfied. It was bound to happen because I set myself up for it. But that doesn't stop it from being any less disappointing. 

"The silence depressed me.  It wasn't the silence of silence.  It was my own silence."

All this makes me feel like I'm not at college. The campus doesn't feel like school because there's a main city road splitting it in half. The University is spread down this long road instead of being a cluster of buildings and dorms. It just doesn't feel like college to me. I'm sure I can't be the only one (I hope I'm not the only one) who doesn't feel like she's at college but I haven't heard it from anyone else yet. I don't know. I just feel something missing in my college experience so far. Maybe it was because I was prepared for an American college experience but took the leap across the pond instead and now find myself on unexpected grounds. 

I haven't been able to come to terms with any of this really because I am so bent on having the amazing college experience that I was told I would. I feel like I can't admit to everyone that I'm not having that amazing time because everyone is expecting me to. I'm in ENGLAND, for goodness' sake, I shouldn't be having a crap time. And it's not England that bothers me. That part is great. It's just. Sigh. What do I say to people when they ask me how fantastic Manchester is and how I must be having the most perfect adventure of my life? I put on a smile and respond quite positively because I know they don't actually want to hear that it's not so great yet. Who goes to England and doesn't have a great time? Then I wonder if everyone else who is supposedly having an awesome time is just faking it. But I really don't think they are. I think very few people are not having a genuinely good college experience. And everyone thinks I'm part of that grand majority who are living it up. I SHOULD be part of it. I am so fricking lucky to be able to be here, what the heck am I complaining for?

Now, take these overwhelming thoughts and feelings that I have just attempted to voice and come back to The Bell Jar. In my overdramatic state, I read this book about a girl falling apart, mentally and emotionally, because she merely exists. On the outside looking in, Esther Greenwood has a life other girls crave. She's got it all going for her, really. And then she goes insane, literally. Ever so quietly and unexpectedly, Esther takes a long trip downhill until she hits rock bottom and has to climb her way up. 

As I sat reading this book, I could hear my mother playing my graduation video for my grandmother in the living room. I could hear speeches being given, names called, diplomas given out. On that day, I still felt like I had all the potential in the world. College hadn't happened yet but when it did, it was still going to be phenomenal. It was like how Esther described her future:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.  From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked."

Listening to this and reading the book at the same time, I felt like I was standing in the middle of these two extremes. No, I wasn't planning on going insane. But I felt like if I stayed going the way I was, it was likely I would have some issues. And on the other extreme was the ever-achieving potentialful student that planned on changing the world, the one staring at all the figs. Except I felt like, stuck in the middle, there were no figs, or at least none within my reach. In that moment, I felt like there was no way I could ever go back to being that ... promising? confidant? positive?

I tried to comfort myself by saying my parents would have never been able to send me to Brown. Like that mattered. I kept thinking I should have stayed in the States. I should have gone to UCLA. Wouldn't I have been happier? Wouldn't that have been fine and dandy? I could have been near home but far enough. I could have roomed with one of my best friends evaaar! But I know I would always wonder what it would be like if I'd gone to England. The What Ifs would not shut up. But then maybe they WOULD shut up because I'd be having such an amazing time? And I could always have done a semester abroad. That's what I should have stuck to, a semester abroad. Then if I didn't like it, it would just be one semester and then I'd be done. Then again, who's to say this wouldn't have happened to me anywhere, wherever I was? How am I supposed to know what place would actually be perfect for me? Who the hell allows an eighteen-year-old to decide her future? Seriously? I KNOW NOTHING.

"[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."

"How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"

That was my depressive mode.

Then I figured I should snap out of it. A couple of my friends at uni in the States would listen to why I thought I was having a bad time and then they'd say they pretty much didn't do anything either but that it didn't bother them as much as it has me. But maybe that was because, again, I'd expected too much. Either way, I had to quit it and find a way to be happy even if I thought I couldn't. I would go out more, I would smile more, I would get off the computer, I would just not do what I've been doing. Instead of waiting to meet those people, I am going to be the kind of person I want to meet.

It shouldn't matter that I'm not at my first choice or that things were a bit suckish in the beginning. It was only the first three months. There is so much more time to be lived and made and experienced. Which seems kind of daunting right now but it shouldn't. It won't be. 

I shouldn't be looking for some amazing adventure that I am not having. I should see the amazing adventure that I am already living. Like I said, I am so lucky and blessed. I have fantastic friends all across the world and awesome people living on my floor and in my whole hall and on my course. It's always, always in the small things, but I think I was expecting something much bigger that it's taking me a little longer to appreciate them.

My friends and I have made a list. We are going to do awesome things and be awesome and do more than just exist. One day we are going to go around the city with just a camera. We are going to venture into the bits of town that we have yet discovered. We are going to find my mom's old dorm. We are going to Chinatown. We're going to eat out. We're going to live the supposedly amazing nightlife of Manchester. We are going to Liverpool. And Stonehenge. We are going to a football match. We will have cooking nights. We are going to find nature and live in it. We are going to make Manchester our own and it will be phenomenal.

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart:  

I am, I am, I am."  

PS: If you've gotten this far, I congratulate you. Please leave me a comment so that I can send you some cookies and hugs.

PPS: It absolutely sucks to be in this mind state and then watch "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" on the plane ride home because in this movie there is a girl named NORAH who goes to a school called SACRED HEART and is deciding whether she should head off to some college called BROWN.

To which I wanted to yell, IT IS NOT THAT EASY, HOLLYWOOD, OKAY?