My Fig Tree

Choosing paths and leaving behind others

I’d like to think that the influence that Sylvia Plath had on my writing is evident but for me, her impact is far more than that in the words I write.
I first read The Bell Jar when I was around seventeen. I was starting my A levels and deciding on the path that my life would take. It was quite daunting to think about, and I still think it is unfair to expect an uncertain teenager to be certain about their future. I had no idea at that time, of what I wanted to do.

Like Esther Greenwood, I found myself under the proverbial fig tree without even knowing it.
This was the metaphor from Sylvia Plath and her only novel that resonated with me the most. The unending possibilities hanging as ripe fruits from extensive branches, rotting with every moment I delayed, desperate for me to pick something.
I don’t want it to sound like a brag, but I was a gifted child. I played violin, guitar, I danced, I acted, I painted and, I wrote. If I had been born in the time of Jane Austen, I might’ve been called a very “accomplished young woman” but it was this that left me frozen in place, just like Esther. Growing up like this, being perceived as capable, “gifted”, has left me exhausted. Too many things pulled me in different directions. So many times, it’s caused me to feel burned out and unaccomplished. I have very little to show for it now given I have forgotten how to read music, play the violin and hold a single ballet resting pose. I do make up interpretive dance routines in my room though and I can play a couple of songs on guitar so that’s something.

In the end, I pursued art, dedicating my studies to art history and fine art painting; the former of which I still enjoy immensely to this day. I find it interesting though that it was when pursuing art history that I truly realised how much I love writing, dissecting, analysing and pulling together my findings and thoughts. That’s what has led to this, I think, writing essays. Up until then, I had been under the fig tree of life, but it was during this time and after that I planted my own.

Around this age, post A levels I had no idea what to do. I remember standing in Tesco and telling my mum I wouldn’t go to university, yet I did. After trying and failing at jobs in hospitality, I decided to at least apply.
This was the time when my fig tree began to flower from its quickly grown branches.
I got in but I was torn as to what I wanted to do. By now I think it is obvious that I chose creative writing. I loved everything about it, and it has really set me on a path as a writer but still, as I stand holding the fig in my hand I feel a greed, a gluttony to do more.

So about to start my Master’s, creative writing once more, I am taking the first bites of this fruit, gushing with seeds of its own opportunities, I look up to survey all the other figs that hang.
The fig wishing I hadn’t given up ballet,
The fig disappointed I never became an Olympic swimmer,
The fig moulding because I no longer have a passion to paint,
The half-touched fig of the modelling world.

There are also figs that I had tried but they had tasted of nothing and didn’t nourish me; the fig of the “trad-wife”, the “marketing girl”, many others too.
I am surrounded by figs of possibility, of what I have wanted to do, the possibilities bearing far too much fruit for me to ever eat. It is stressful and it has left me frozen in place.
This fig tree is dying, my possibilities diminishing before my eyes, successes I could’ve had but I chose something else instead.
The writer’s fig is in my palm, juicy, tasty, one I want to bite into again but before I do I notice something within.
A smaller fig, a seed it seems.
It contains more possibilities, all stemming from my writing fig.
Actress,
Playwright,
Magazine writer,
Author,
Novelist,
Poet.

I now realise that my previous fig tree was bound to die, and I am not meant for all these successes but instead the ones that are woven into my true passion of writing. They all come from this one writing fig. So many possibilities and a promise I never have to define myself with just one thing. I have allowed the other figs to die and now I plant a new fig tree, one that won’t grow too big but one I will be able to eat every single fruit from and enjoy it too.