My Fig Tree Moment

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Sylvia Path quote in The Bell Jar when she finds herself at a crossroads. She imagines herself sitting underneath a fig tree looking up at all the equally delectable figs. Each fig is a different way her life could go. One fig is having a family. One is moving to Europe and another is South America. One is becoming a poet and another is becoming an athlete. Finally after imagining all the options and even acknowledging the options she couldn’t quite make out yet she says:

“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 feel like I’m in my fig tree moment. I’ve been feeling at a crossroads lately. Not just about leaving Budapest but about what I’ll do when I get back to America. I could choose a number of different things and I know it would be fine. It would probably be great! But choosing to pursue one career or goal means not being able to give myself completely to the other options. 

The passage goes on to say, “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.”

I used to feel like not choosing something meant it would shrivel up and go away. But now I feel like if something is meant for me it’ll come back and so I’m not stressing as much or holding too many expectations on my future. I do find myself in fits of anxiety, plagued by the idea that I’ll flop and flounder when I return. And theres not really enough time to stop and recenter myself because theres just so much to do before I leave. 

I should mention that while this passage in The Bell Jar is quite famous, not a lot of people mention the following page where she realizes she is spiraling a bit. She realizes she just needs to have some water and eat something and know that she will choose what is right for her. But like Plath I, too, feel no confidence in my decisions sometimes. I let the ‘what-ifs’ scare me away so much that I’m left in a gray colored purgatory where I’m always wanting something but never doing it. 

I have always struggled with how other people view me. I struggle with the fact that I can’t control their perception of me. I struggle with creating my own narrative in their heads. I decide off of one slight interaction that they feel a certain way about me and then I let it snowball. One of my biggest fears is seeming like a flake. I HATE the idea that I could ever let anyone down. I compensate ( or maybe overcompensate) by trying to do everything. By trying to please everyone. I used to overwork myself and over promise my time so I could make sure I showed up for everyone in my life. I did this in college too to disastrous results. The semester before I studied abroad I was trying to jam in all the French classes that would qualify me for the French University I wanted to go to. I was in a play at a community theater near Atlanta and about to start rehearsals for a play in my theater program. I was trying to juggle all this along with friendships, my romantic relationship, my jobs, and my regular classes. I snapped. I remember I walked into my professor Gaye Jeffers office one day to ask her a random question about something. The minute she turned from her desk I just collapsed into a ball of tears and anxiety and mumbled words. I cried for over an hour in her office about nothing in particular but also about everything. At the end I had come to the conclusion that despite me trying to fill everyone else’s wells, I had left mine completely empty. 

I don’t let myself get that desperately empty anymore. I’m pretty good about guarding my time and establishing solid boundaries. But still. I hate the idea that I might not be able to help someone who wants something from me. I think that’s why I liked working in hospitality for so long but also why I burnt out. 

These impulses to immediately think about how someone else will view me has stopped me from doing things that I’ve really wanted to do. And its hard to look at my life’s choices completely through a lens of my own design- not through the eyes of someone else.

I’m feeling a lot about going back to the US and obviously the huge change is bringing out my anxieties. What I want to do might be judged and I just have to be okay with that. There’s a lot that is unknown and that’s not fun. I think transitioning back to living in the US is going to be rough. 

I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless in regards to my life in the USA lately. There are people in power that have taken away my rights. Education and public programs are diminishing and pretty much all the fields I have experience working in are abysmally underfunded at the moment. But then I think about the year 536 which is largely considered the worst year in all of history. A volcano in Iceland is said to have erupted, dimming the sun for almost 18 months. Temperatures plunged, the world was thrown into darkness, years long droughts and famines- all in the same year. And of course no one probably knew exactly what was happening because there wasn’t an information highway that shoots info straight into your brain through a little portable computer you carry with you at all times but I’m sure everyone knew shit was getting serious, right? And I had very distant relatives back then who persevered. In fact everyone alive today is made of the people who survived those times. And I want to think I have the same enduring will to live. Maybe my great great (great x100) grandparents somehow gifted me their fortitude. I want to think these incendiary times are just the extreme edge of a pendulum that will eventually reach it’s apex and start swinging the other way. Despite all the absolute suck I still do think there’s things worth fighting for.

I just returned from Greece yesterday and can’t wait to share all the travel tips I learned along the way. Additionally, today marks exactly one week until I leave Budapest. I’ve written my thoughts on leaving but its probably the most sentimental thing I’ve ever written so maybe I won’t share it here. 

I plan on expanding this blog when I return to New York so please stick with me. I might not be galavanting to a different European city every week but I am sure that I’ll still have adventures that are worth sharing. 

Check out my instagram here for even more musings.