I was in my room and the yellowish lights on the ceiling left shadows in the folds of my white sheets. A couple stains marked the pillow behind my back and my lamp sat old and rusty on the nightstand. A paperback copy of The Bell Jar lay open to a page where I had underlined a chunk of text in black ink. I had become a devout Plath fan about halfway through the book. I found her plain language satisfying. I liked that the female character was not nice, that she broke apart despite her enviable life.

When I set the novel aside, I started to wonder how much of it was autobiographical. I sat with my laptop on my thighs, clicked open my browser, and entered a world of private research. Wikipedia alerted me to the tragedy of Plath’s suicide, her black-and-white face stoic above the date of her birth and death. My eyes widened when I saw we were born on the same day: October 27. It felt strangely intimate to share a birthday with her, even if they were seventy-five years apart. I imagined a string between us, and I felt it pulling me toward her. I wanted to know about who she was. I started following the hyperlinks, flicking from one biography to the next, reading this analysis of her poem and that one, tying different journal entries to phases of her life and — Oh! She wrote this one just before she died! I became consumed. A compulsion dragged my fingers across the keyboard, settled in my spine, sunk into my skull; my hands were shaking with excitement, my neck was hunched over and vulture-like, my eyes were wanting, devouring word after word.

I pulled my head back and swallowed, forcing myself back to the yellowish lights and shadowed sheets. I checked the clock, and three hours had gone by. Dozens of photographs glowed on my screen, tabs were bunched at the top of my browser, all about her. I gathered myself with growing horror. I had been invigorated by the tragedy of a dead girl.

What had happened to me? What had taken control? I knew it was not just interest that had strung me along; something far darker had taken me captive. When I read about her suffering, I was delighted by her decay. I was thrilled by her unfolding; I liked pulling at her seams and watching her unravel. I confess. I liked watching her rot away.

My compulsion came from the same godless hollow that made me wish for the pretty girl with pigtails to do something rotten; she was nice, but she had too much. I wanted to know she had a little bad in her; I wanted to see her ugly bits. I wanted to recognise my own dirtiness in her. If that little girl fell low enough, I could touch her. I could shatter the divide.

With Plath, I relished in her earthliness, her inability to withstand. I liked to peel away her papery skin and sink my nails into the wrinkly flesh beneath. To read my shameful thoughts written out by a woman who was admired, to watch her be torn apart by the same demons in my heart: it quenched a thirst, it was addicting. Why, why, why?

Womanhood, what a lofty thing. I used to try to catch it. It was always out of reach. When a woman holds it in her hands — the fame, the beauty, the success — she is an abstraction, set apart. When it turns out to be too heavy and she staggers from the sky, I am satisfied to know she is not immortal after all.

I think of today, how we lean in to hear the lore. “She did what?” We shift in our seats, lean closer to our friend, ever-expectant: hoping to watch another angel fall.

Kate Moss, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, Princess Diana. You may pity them now; they are already at the bottom. But when you first heard? How scandalous it was! The drugs, the drinking, the anorexia, the bulimia — they were just like us, out-of-control and imperfect. We got to glimpse the secret ruins of the women we all envied and idealized, who we had come to deify. Their pretty white dresses became dirtied, their incorporeal existence decomposed.

We would never push a woman off her rung, but to see the soiled soles of her shoes from down below? That is another story.