The uplifting poetry of Sylvia Plath and related ramblings

Well, so far, I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on the POV issue, but I give Theresa's opinion extra weight because her undergrad was in English and Barry's because he would tell me if it were absolute crap. I'd still like other opinions too, though, even if you read this in a couple of months. I'll still be working on the story....

So...at Bible study last week, someone was talking about how he "hit bottom" so he no longer had any reason to be afraid of things. That phrase has always bugged me, particularly in regards to addiction and recovery, but I do understand what he was saying and can appreciate the sentiment. I've been mulling over this for a couple of days, and Sylvia Plath's poem, "The Elm," keeps coming to mind. I'll just put the first stanza in this post, and then put the whole poem in a separate post:

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

A few thoughts:

-Hitting “the bottom” is a rather indefinite concept. What you think is the bottom might just be a tree branch you’ve hit on your descent. No matter how bad things are, they could be worse.

-The worst thing for one person might hardly phase another. For instance, some of the kids I work with have had so many horrible things happen that another awful event is accepted much more readily than it would be by a child with a happier life. (I’m not saying this is a good thing. I’m just making an observation.) Case in point: A nine-year-old whose family members are always in and out of prison told me about the police coming to her house to arrest her mom for the most recent armed robbery. When she saw the police, she just sighed, “What did my mom do this time?”

-Basically, when we talk about “hitting bottom,” I think we mean an event that shakes our worldview. For the child in the example above, her worldview is that adults will let her down, and she can’t trust anyone. Having her mom put back in prison did not change this worldview. On the other hand, for a child who idolized her mother, this same incident could be earthshaking. When we talk about addicts “hitting bottom,” we generally mean that they’ve changed their worldview and recognized the need for help and change.

-“I don’t not fear it: I have been there.” Sometimes we DO fear it for precisely the same reason.

-"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper." —Betsie Ten Boom (died in a concentration camp where she was sent for hiding Jews during WWII)