This incident and a few others cause her to become more and more reclusive, causing her to spend her time only at her house and in her garden.
Dickinson suffered an emotional crisis in the early 1860s. Her unbalanced state of mind is said to have inspired her to write. In 1862 she may have written over three hundred poems. Dickinson started an exchange with Higginson, literary editor of the Atlantic Monthly; she sent him nearly one hundred of her poems for his criticism. Dickinson's reclusions increased greater standards in 1869, and she refused to leave her home or to meet visitors. She formed the habit of only wearing while clothes. Her isolation intensified even more when her father died unexpectedly in 1874 and she had to care for her helpless mother. Her mother died in 1882 and two years later, a very close friend of the family and maybe her romantic attachment," Judge Otis P. Lord died. That led to what Dickinson said to be an "attack of nerves." Later, in 1886, she was diagnosed as having Bright's disease, a kidney dysfunction that led to her death in May of that year.
During Dickinson's lifetime only seven of her poems were published, all anonymously and some without her knowing until they were published. Editors changed the lyrics of her poems, but were still only read by her family and old school friends. In 1890 Poems of Emily Dickinson was published and even though everyone's first reaction was negative, the book went through eleven editions in two years.
Dickinson's writing of the poem "Proof" show's many of her disturbances of love in her life. She says, "That I did always love, I bring thee proof: That till I love I did not love enough" (Complete Poems). Dickinson feels the reasons her loves failed were because of her mistakes. It drove her crazy, the fact that who she loved did not have the same feelings for her. Not all of her poems reflected her feelings of worthlessness and loneliness though.
