{"id":93,"date":"1963-02-04T12:17:18","date_gmt":"1963-02-04T17:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/2019\/04\/03\/february-4-1963-copy\/"},"modified":"2019-04-26T14:45:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T18:45:02","slug":"february-4-1963","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/february-4-1963\/","title":{"rendered":"February 4, 1963"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div class=\"h5p-iframe-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"h5p-iframe-49\" class=\"h5p-iframe\" data-content-id=\"49\" style=\"height:1px\" src=\"about:blank\" frameBorder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" title=\"February 4th, 1963\"><\/iframe><\/div><div class=\"h5p-iframe-wrapper\"><iframe id=\"h5p-iframe-50\" class=\"h5p-iframe\" data-content-id=\"50\" style=\"height:1px\" src=\"about:blank\" frameBorder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" title=\"February 4th, 1963\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/p>\n<h2>Transcript:<\/h2>\n<p>23 Fitzroy Road<br \/>\nLondon N.W.l<br \/>\nFebruary 4, 1963<\/p>\n<p>Dear Dr. Beuscher,<\/p>\n<p>I write from London where I have found a flat &amp; an au pair and can see ahead financially for about a year. I thought I&#8217;d get an unfurnished flat~ furnish it by poems &amp; loans, &amp; rent it out summers to tourists while I went back to Devon, to earn most of the rent for it &amp; Ted says he&#8217;ll try to pay us about $280 a month while&#8217; I try to make up the rest by writing. I have finally read the Fromm &amp; think that I have been guilty of what he calls &#8216;idolatrous love&#8217;, that I lost myself in Ted instead of finding myself, and this was why deeply underneath the marvelous loving, the writing, the babies I feared his loss, his leaving me &amp; depended on him more &amp; more, making him both idol &amp; father. There was enough identity left to me in Devon to make me feel immense relief at his departure &amp; at the prospect of divorce&#8212;now I shall grow out of his shadow, I thought, I shall be me. While we were married we were never apart &amp; all experience filtered through each other. On a grownup level, I don&#8217;t think I could have endured a marriage of infidelities. l had a beautiful, virile, brilliant man &amp; he still is, whatever immaturities there may be in his throwing over everything in such a violent way. He has said he is sorry for the lying, and shows concern that we get on on our own.<\/p>\n<p>What appals me is the return of my madness, my paralysis, my fear &amp; vision of the worst&#8212;cowardly withdrawal, a mental hospital, lobotomies. Perhaps this is accentuated by my seeing Ted once a week when he comes to see Frieda&#8212;seeing how happy &amp; whole &amp; independent he is now, how much more I admire him like this, &amp; what good friends we could be if I could manage to grow up too. He is gaga over this ad-agency girl who has gone back to live with her 3rd husband to keep the passion hot, although she did live for 3 weeks with Ted &amp; flew to Spain for a holiday with him. If I were simply jealous about this it would be okay. But I know Spain and lovemaking would do me no good now, not until I find myself again. I feel I need a ritual for survival from day to day until I begin to grow out of this death &amp; found Fromm&#8217;s recommendation for concentration, patience &amp; faith gave me a kind of peace, but that I keep slapping into this pit of panic &amp; deepfreeze, with my mother&#8217;s horrible example of fearful anxiety &amp; &#8220;unselfishness&#8221; on one side &amp; the beauties of my two little children on the other. I am living on sleeping pills &amp; nerve tonic &amp; have managed a few commissions for a magazine &amp; the BBC and poems very good but, I feel written on the edge of madness. The publicity of Ted&#8217;s leaving is universal &amp; I was taking it all with dignity &amp; verve at first&#8212;people were buying poems &amp; putting BBC work in my way, &amp; I am scared to death I shall just pull up the psychic shroud &amp; give up. A poet, a writer, I am I think very narcissistic &amp; the despair at being 30 &amp; having let myself slide, studied nothing for years, having mastered no body of objective knowledge is on me like a cold, accusing wind. Just now it is torture to me to dress, plan meal~, put one foot in front of the other. Ironically my novel about my first breakdown is getting rave reviews over here. I feel a simple act of will would make the world steady &amp; solidify. No-one can save me but myself, but I need help &amp; my doctor is referring me to a woman psychiatrist. Living on my wits, my writing&#8212;even partially, is very hard at this time, it is so subjective &amp; dependent on objectivity. I am, for the first time since my marriage, relating to people without Ted, but my own lack of center, of mature identity, is a great torment. I am aware of a cowardice. in myself, a wanting to give up. If I could study, read, enjoy people on my own Ted&#8217;s leaving would be hard, but manageable. But there is this damned, self-induced freeze. I am suddenly in agony, desperate, thinking Yes, let him take over the house, the children, let me just die &amp; be done with it. How can I get out of this ghastly defeatist cycle &amp; grow up. I am only too aware that love and a husband are impossibles to me at this time, I am incapable of being myself &amp; loving myself.<\/p>\n<p>Now the babies are crying, I must take them out to tea.<\/p>\n<p>With love,<br \/>\nSylvia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transcript: 23 Fitzroy Road London N.W.l February 4, 1963 Dear Dr. Beuscher, I write from London where I have found a flat &amp; an au pair and can see ahead financially for about a year. I thought I&#8217;d get an unfurnished flat~ furnish it by poems &amp; loans, &amp; rent it out summers to tourists&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/february-4-1963\/\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">February 4, 1963<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2380,"featured_media":89,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/arx340-jbsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}