I was my own woman. The next step was to find the proper sort of man.

Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.

I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love.

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

I am myself. That is not enough.

I like you, but not too much. I don’t want to like anybody too much.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.