Lately, as a normal 20-something-year-old girl does, I have been thinking about Sylvia Plath’s writings, especially the fig tree analogy. For those who don’t know about it, it goes like this;
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
So I started to think about my own.
I opened up my journal and the first thing I write is ‘astronomer’. I wanted to write physicist, really, for a milisecond. This was never a career option for me, considering the amount of math classes I’ve failed. But deep down in my heart, and in my expensive science theory books that take me months to read because I need to do so many research while reading, I always wanted to do something related to science. (I wanted to figure something (anything) out, really. This first branch of my fig tree really breaks my heart. It was impossible, always.
The rest were painter (come on), filmmaker (but in a Greta Gerwig way), sailor (because everyone else in my family are), anthropologist (I love history), archeologist (i love Indiana Jones and Brendan Fraser in the movie Mummy), Cafe/Restaurant owner (my family owned a couple), historian (I said I LOVE history).
Oh but I wanted be so many things! I wanted to be a fighter in the Trojan War, I wanted be a silent worker in the Library of Alexandria, I wanted to be an Egyptian Pharaoh, I wanted to wear men’s clothes and hide my hair under the hat and go out to steal with other drunk pirates! I wanted to draw the world’s map before everyone else and I wanted to walk on the moon and I wanted to reach a star that doesn’t burn like ours. I wanted to live a love that makes cleopatra jealous and I wanted Alexandre Dumas to read my texts and be jealous, I wanted to carve another David they have to move out Michelangelo’s. I wanted to have a microphone and speak a sentence, making the whole world listen for a second.
and thinking about this, I wrote to my journal, writer.
My fig tree swayed with a wind drop a few leaves, then I watched a small green fig drop to the ground and get muddy. I have always wanted to be writer. But clearly I am not the best at it.
