I worship Sylvia Plath and cry when I listen to Phoebe Bridgers: I’m a ‘sad girl’ cliché and I’m proud of it

I have a poster of ‘The Bell Jar’ on the wall and a tattoo of an anatomical heart on my sleeve, writes Victoria Richards. Call me tragic if you like, but being a ‘sad girl’ brings me joy...

Take heart, fellow sad girls. Joy is coming (Shutterstock)

Every year, I make a pilgrimage to Sylvia Plath’s grave in Heptonstall with a close friend. We take pens to leave at her headstone and we sit in the grass and sometimes we write poems of our own.

Amelia and I talk constantly about love and loss, send each other first drafts of writing projects and ask questions that probably sound achingly earnest (but we mean it): “How is your heart?” Most nights, we sign off goodnight texts with the closing lines of a poem by one of our favourites, Kim Addonizio: “Joy is coming”.

We’re sad girls. And we’re proud of it.