Metaphors - Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

After reading a lot of Plath as a angst-y youth, I always found her to be immature. She always seems to be whining or complaining about everything. I assumed that she had a bad attitude and a terrible lease on life and, although I still feel about the same as I always have, I now realize that she actually has some insight into life and a freshness of perspective that I hadn't seen before. At this time last year this poem would have no significant effect on me. Being pregnant and mostly isolated from the loving support of others usually associated with pregnancy makes even a cold person warm to the pain of others. If only they can directly relate to the precise feeling and origin of the pain. Pain and suffering are pathetic and selfish emotions. Pregnancy is not a blessing, motherhood is. Pregnancy is a time of selfish and pathetic inner reflection where the expecting mother sees either nothing but the definiteness of supreme and all-encompassing happiness in the perfection of their future or, toil inside trying to find the lofty and higher power they ascribe to mothers and find none of in themselves. I am nothing but a means, a stage and getting fat. The stretch marks, constipation, indigestion, nausea, fear, loneliness, fatigue and constant agitation are all symptoms of this blessing that is supposed to occur sometime in the future. Lovely.

I always considered myself very lucky. At the young age of 22 I discovered what takes a lifetime for some people and never happens for others. I discovered that I am beautiful, not beautiful in the way that all young women are transiently beautiful, but beautiful in the way that a person with an astounding soul lights up their face from the inside when you look into their eyes. My soul can always use some improvement, but what makes me a little different is the ability I have to see the inside with clarity. I am honest with myself and that translates to my behavior to other people as well. There is no need to make myself try to appear more attractive than I am in search of a mate because the difference between myself and most any other 20something woman I know is stark. I have no shame in my body my features which will all change eventually into something less than the beauty of my twenties. I have been blessed with great genes and will probably look more or less as I do now for some time, but it helps to be self assured. Women who age gracefully and over time letting the gray hair and wrinkles take their place as they are earned are so much more beautiful than women in their twenties who are beautiful for now but will grow into a different woman with time. The choice is for each individual to decide how graceful the aging process is.

Pregnancy has changed all of that. It is possibly the hormones or it could also be the misery. I had hoped that my changing mind and body wouldn't rock me to the inner but just be another part. It is a huge paradigm shift. Books read differently and conversation leads to morals and truths and higher thoughts. Any trivial conversation later tastes like sucking on a bag of pennies. It is just distasteful and lingers as an unpleasant memory.