7: The Bell Jar 180-238

"A bad dream.
I remember everything.
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them.
But they were a part of me. They were my landscape." (237, Plath)

On a plane ride home, I watched the movie The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It is one of my favorite movies to date. It is about a procedure a person undergoes to erase the memory of ever knowing someone.
This quote reminds me much of my own life and of that movie. If you were given the chance to erase a memory of one person, or any memory for that matter, would you do it? The clear answer would be, yes. Erase the bad memories. Erase the bad thoughts that haunt my mind. But here, in the quote, Plath explains that the bad memories are what shapes us. "But they were a part of me. They were my landscape." (237) . We simply would not be the same person without our past experiences.
Esther has underwent hell on earth. After many failed suicide attempts, one electroshock therapy treatment that she remained awake and in immense pain for, Esther is now in a rehabilitation center where she is slowly regaining sanity. Her thoughts and actions now swirl around her. They do not seem real. "A bad dream.
I remember everything." (237) Her insanity resembles a bad, hazy nightmare. Some of the memories I have are so bad, but now that I have gotten past them, they are in a haze, yet I still remember them in my mind.