the haunting fig tree metaphor

When I first came across Sylvia’s fig tree metaphor, I cried until my eyes were swollen.

For too long I felt as though my tongue had been pinned down, words wrapped around my head like crinkled sheets on an old mattress. It was impossible to explain to anyone just how tightly I cling to life without sounding unhinged. To speak aloud the thought that I would rather perish at once than live a life of insignificance—a life where I do not pour myself entirely into everything I’ve ever desired—felt unbearable.

“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.”

As alluring as it was, it was also horrifying. I suddenly felt at a loss because I knew I had multiple dreams. I wished for a life more grand—in experience—than most people would ever dare dream of. And yet, I also knew how impractical my dreams were.

I fear that if I pick the fig carved with “motherhood” in delicate italics, I will be deceived, that it won’t be only sweetness and beauty.

I fear that if I pluck the fig marked “career,” I will leave this world lonely, never having known a love so profound it could resurrect my soul.

Yet I also imagine myself in my own apartment, content with the echo of my own voice as the only soundtrack of my home.

I am a paradox. Every word I let out contradicts itself. I utter one thing, but mean the complete opposite. Not because I am untrue to myself, but because I long to live at both ends of the earth. The last thing I want is a life of mediocrity.

The woods seem to call my name in the shake of their branches. The sea breeze carries its salt scent toward me, begging me to return to the shore where my feet meet the tide. The seagulls chant to me in their strange tongue. I notice these so called trivialities and breathe in their beauty. I want to be overfilled with memories of the earth. I want to be disgustingly intelligent. To point at a flower and recite ten facts about it without hesitation. To be brimming with knowledge and curiosity. To be associated with the word free. To have loved and been loved. To have completely feasted on the festivities of life. To die with proof of having been alive—grey curls tied back, smile lines etched deep, skin wrinkled with time. All an indication of livelihood.

And so no, the fig tree can never be enough. What is the significance of a fig dropping anyway? Is it not possible to plant another tree? Perhaps one greater? Is it wrong to wish for an expansion of the soul? Why must we cling to only one fruit, when we could sit beside a basket of old, rotting figs and still nourish a flourishing tree?

My greatest fear is not in choosing, but in holding on too tightly. To pluck only one fig, to wrap my fingers so hard around it that it spoils. Juice dripping down my arm, wasted, its sweetness destroyed. I know this fear all too well.

But I shall pluck the figs from the tree again and again until I am content anyways. Until my hands are permanently stained purple. Until my lips taste of sweetness and rot alike. Until the world looks at me and knows: I did not starve at the roots of the tree, I devoured it whole