i walked with you once upon a dream

So Sylvia Plath wrote this poem, and it's one of my favorites and it goes like this:

"A Mad Girl's Love Song"

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)


And yeah, Sylvia Plath is sad, and weird, and has a lot of chutzpah writing books like the Bell Jar that are simultaneously depressing and unprecedented (depressedented?).

Sometimes I think about it, and I wonder, how much of how we feel about other people is a product of just what happens in our heads, rather than the tangible world around? And are our feelings just a product of all of what we've been exposed to? Are our feelings more like dreams-- a mixture of what we've been exposed to getting jumbled up in our heads-- but slightly more refined so as not to seem cognitively unsound? What if our feelings are all we have to go from in face of little empirical evidence?

Just think about how you choose your career. You kind of think about it a bit, weigh the options, think about what you'd most like to study or apply for. And then you stick with it, unless you really hate it. You might love it, and it's right. Or you might love some of it, but not all of it.What says this is right? What if there IS something better out there, that you're best-suited for? How much of our decision-making process can be based on hope for liking things better in the future or finding something better in the future?  You're basing your paths off of a notion that could be wrong. Same with dating. Sometimes I feel like life is a game of guess and check, because people start things and end things on whims and fancy-free, confused notions of what life really is.