{"id":523,"date":"2016-11-02T05:23:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T05:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/?p=523"},"modified":"2019-11-20T10:23:01","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T10:23:01","slug":"the-bell-jars-fault-by-hedwig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/2016\/11\/02\/the-bell-jars-fault-by-hedwig\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bell Jar\u2019s Fault &#8211; By Hedwig"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_og0a98NEF71un32nx_1280.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"524\" data-link=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/?attachment_id=524\" class=\"wp-image-524\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_og0a98NEF71un32nx_1280.jpg 800w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_og0a98NEF71un32nx_1280-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_og0a98NEF71un32nx_1280-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_og0a98NEF71un32nx_1280-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Depression is an insidious malady, and although due recognition is given to its effects, the forms in which it manifests are quite different. Even with World Suicide Prevention Day being observed on the 10<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;of September every year, the work done by those studying and helping others through the disease is around-the-clock and often unrecognized.<\/em><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>If you\u2019re friends with a person who suffers from depression, you\u2019re one of those helping.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>But if you don\u2019t know anyone who is, and you seem to not be able to recall anyone who<\/em>could&nbsp;<em>be depressed, think again. Maybe the next time you offer a stray compliment, you\u2019d be saving someone\u2019s life.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was in the eighth standard, I remember distinctly that I had a picture of a dead mouse in a bell jar, in my science textbook. If you read the small-sized, closely spaced text near it, it would tell you that putting a mouse in a bell jar with limited oxygen would prove that animals needed oxygen to live. When the oxygen ran out, the mouse died. It was an experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That summer, I read&nbsp;<em>The Bell Jar&nbsp;<\/em>by Sylvia Plath.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>High-functioning depression is when a person appears to have it all together on the outside, while struggling with depression internally. This could mean that they have great grades, have a group of friends, show involvement with the community and, in short, are nothing like the black and white stockphoto images you get of people with their heads in their hands and with tear-streaked faces, when you Google \u201cdepression\u201d. They\u2019re in no obvious need of help, and even if they\u2019ve been treated before, they\u2019re largely considered \u201cnormal again\u201d.<\/em><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sylvia Plath, in the last one year of her life, wrote many of her poems that would later become the cornerstones of her career. She finished&nbsp;<\/em>The Bell Jar&nbsp;<em>shortly before her death, and although she had clearly reached out for help to her GP, her suicide has been called an unanswered cry for help.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Plath may not qualify as a high-functioning depressed person, but if the metric you used to ascertain depression was achievement, then she was by no means depressed.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I read&nbsp;<em>The Bell Jar&nbsp;<\/em>for the first time, I often had to rub my hands over the words of the books to feel like I\u2019d absorbed their meaning. I would stare at the same sentence for hours together, a play unfurling in my head where Plath would throw herself against the sound-proof glass of her bell jar in an aggressive plea for help. She never cried though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the book, she wrote \u2013 \u201cI didn\u2019t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I\u2019d cry for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I shut the book, and sat up straight. Since then, I\u2019ve never let anyone look at me closely.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A competition is announced on Suicide Prevention Day \u2013 we have to write a letter to a depressed person, or to a person who\u2019s contemplating suicide. &nbsp;I chew on the end of my pencil before I realize I have bits of rubber on my tongue. It\u2019s not compulsory, but I still want to participate even if I\u2019ve never written to a depressed person before (I\u2019ve written to myself but I don\u2019t think that counts \u2013 I have my grades up, I\u2019m involved in \u201cteam activities\u201d and I\u2019ve stopped trying to tell someone about my \u201cdepression\u201d ever since the last time I tried, my friend thought I was playing a prank on her\u201d). I try to picture what I would say to a person sitting hunched at the corner of a corridor, bawling and worrying about being stable enough to study for a Mid-Term. That\u2019s what a depressed person looks like, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It gets better.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>You\u2019ll be fine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>You\u2019re strong enough to get through this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I tear the paper up. It sounds too wrong.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you give a pen and paper to a mouse in a bell jar and ask it to write a letter to a suicidal person, it can\u2019t. On one hand it\u2019s because it can\u2019t read or write (probably), and on the other it\u2019s because its oxygen supply has run out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think mine did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I think of it as the bell jar\u2019s fault, it makes it easier to come to terms with my actions. I had things to be grateful for, and I had as normal an amount of strife as is expected from the life of a college student. I\u2019ve floated along the stream of mediocrity \u2013 a fact that\u2019s never really bothered me \u2013 and I\u2019m not extraordinary in my expectations for there to be much disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose, then, that I\u2019m just sad. It\u2019s all the bell jar\u2019s fault. I\u2019ve tried pushing it and breaking the glass and overturning it so that I can be set free, but it just hasn\u2019t budged. I\u2019ve tried crying into pillows and screaming into empty spaces, but that works even less. So I went about doing the things I had to do until I couldn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose the people who seem like they don\u2019t need letters written to them are actually the ones who do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that the people who do the letter writing, sometimes need someone to write to them.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Depression is an insidious malady, and although due recognition is given to its effects, the forms in which it manifests are quite different. Even with World Suicide Prevention Day being observed on the 10th&nbsp;of September every year, the work done by those studying and helping others through the disease is <a href=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/2016\/11\/02\/the-bell-jars-fault-by-hedwig\/\" class=\"btn btn-link continue-link\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}