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...
Being in service and being involved in something that is greater than you is what makes a person complete and whole. The very first thing I ever did in terms of activism was for an anti-atom bomb rally.
When I was a child, I saw my father diving to the deepest point in the ocean with the U.S. Navy.
I suppose I've always done my share of crying, especially when there's no other way to contain my feelings. I know that men ain't supposed to cry, but I think that's wrong. Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human. Oh yes, I cry.
Though are hands are chained like they are, they haven't taken music from us yet. So that's how I'll fight. People tell me don't quit like everyone else. I wont have no fear.
Braving obstacles and hardships is braver than retreat to tranquility.
I've had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O'Connor told me, 'Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you'll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.'
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