Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die

Plath describes an adulthood spent hungry for different identities, but she’s stymied in an obsession with determining which next step would be best—as if there were a single right answer and as if she had only one chance to choose.

Plath is continually distressed by her difficulty in defining what she believes must be her firm, unambiguous role in the world.

“Prosperity doesn’t only mean money, of course. There’s a reason it’s called a helping hand.”

We were all ostensibly there in supplication, pleading for myriad rescues. It was a place for humility, but humility didn’t require shame.

not to see the glaring, repeated juxtaposition of “good” and “productive.” Each required the other. To be good was to produce; to have a good day was to go to bed with fewer items on my to-do list than there had been when I awoke. But good how? Good as in positive, enjoyable? Clearly not; those “good” days left me distraught. More likely, it was th

I have one good, productive day and it wears me down, perhaps because of the futility of it. Perhaps because I’m certain routine & organization is the key to steadiness & ease & then I do it & the result is a sort of emptiness. What am I missing? (Trust the process.)

I’m doing the thing → feeling bad & explaining it away → my behavior is the cause. My decisions → because I stayed home, because I let work build up, because my sleep schedule is all fucked. I want this to be the case because if it’s the other option—that I’m not “better”—then I’m as far away from recovery as I ever was. No progress.

The goals varied, but without question each required performance. My recovery relied upon a coherent narrative and an audience to follow it. It could never be entirely for myself, because it needed to be not only validated but celebrated. It would be worthless otherwise.

I was in constant negotiation with what I’d always assumed was laziness, a moral failing, and my remedy was an obsession with systems. I needed discipline, routines; those would be key if I wanted to deserve this dream job, if I didn’t want to squander the opportunity. I cycled through the most extreme versions of hope and disappointment, hinging e