the fig tree

April 07, 2025

the fig tree

i'm going through something. my life is never stable, it's chaotic. even when everything is fine my mind is not. my mind can't handle being me and it acts out over it. if i were me i'd want to escape me too. i do want to escape me. i want to be taken away. yet i still want parts of myself that are uniquely different from the rest. i don't know what i'm doing. i can't seem to stand on my feet.

“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.”

i want to share what my figs would be because this quote and book (the bell jar) is something very special to me.