The Fig Tree

I am a woman, which mean's Sylvia Plath's fig tree analogy haunts me every fucking day.

“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.”

Journal IV: 1.14.2020

Will I ever cease to be a disappointment? I don't have a plan for my life-- not even a vague dream of what it will look like. A career? I have the potential to be anything I desire-- a writer, a seamstress, musician, botanist, doctor, veterinarian, chemist, translator. I am a Renaissance man, and it is a curse... And children? How can I know whether my job will allow it? It must be nice to be a man and not have to think twice about choosing between the two. And we won't even mention deciding where I want to live.

All this rumination & tears has sprung from the two hours I spent in my second year honors seminar... I couldn't even hate her for giving us the assignments she did. The assignments themselves? Simple. Easy. Just time-consuming for any other person. But me? With my anxiety? Each thing she listed felt like another block being pulled from my Jenga tower. The Food for Thought dinner where we have to socialize and discuss a reading over a meal? Something's off.  The presentation we have to give next Tuesday telling a story about ourselves? Wobby. The two group discussions we each have to lead? Uh-oh. The resume we have to get a professional in our chosen career field to review? Crash. My mind became a scatter of blocks, tumbling and bouncing to the ground. 

None of these things should jar me the way that they do. None of the extroverts batted an eye. And I was shaking, feeling physically ill. Why can I solve hundreds of complex organic chemistry problems with ease, but the thought of speaking or leading or marketing my lack of experience takes me down like a blow to the back of the knees?

I left the class almost in tears.

1.15.2020

I could be a botanist. I could travel the world studying medicinal plants and educating others about them. But would I get bored with plants? Would I regret it and wish I'd become a doctor or EMT or vet instead? I'm no closer to pinning down what I want to pursue than I've ever been. I do have a vague desire to have a doctorate in whatever I decide on-- the ring of Dr. Foy is familiar and feels right.

"Ms. or Mrs.?

"Doctor." That would be such a powerful thing to say.

1.19.2020

I needed to get away from Aurora and all the people I knew lest I stick to anyone person I knew because I mistook the dream of having a small-town high school sweetheart and the safety of familiarity for love... figure out who I am away from what I know. But I didn't get far enough away from myself-- living with family wasn't the smartest decision in that regard-- so I haven't really explored and I'm still trying to hold onto all the things I had as well as all the things I've picked up and my hands are so, so full.

I don't know what to do. Where I'm going. Who I'm going with.

1.20.2020

The only good bit about being up so late is that my manic self found inspiration for the intro presentation so now I have a beginning and an end to it, but still no idea what to put in the middle or how to transition.

How symbolic of my life. I know where I am now and I know I want to be happy at the end. I just don't have a fucking clue how I'm going to get there.

1.25.2020

I didn't understand all of it [the research presentation], but there was something wonderful about the sense of community in that room. Maybe I'm meant to be a graduate student at M University?

1.30.2020

Do I love Botany, or do I love the aesthetic? [And does it matter?]

via Pinterest

                                    

2.21.2020

I want to help people, and I feel like that desire comes from God. That's why my backup plan so far has been physician assistant. I can be like Daddy and help people from a little rural clinic. I could be happy with that. It pays well and is flexible enough to have a family as well. But I'm not excited about it. I don't wake up filled with passion and motivation. I don't even like telling people that's what I want to do because physician assistant is such a mouthful and I have such a quiet voice I always have to repeat it again. How can I pursue a career I don't even like to say?

The thought of vet school has entered my mind again. For year, little Rebecca told people she wanted to be a veterinarian. And then the thought of those long, hard eight extra years seemed daunting and the knowledge that I, with my anxiety, would have to be outgoing and self-advocating to have my own practice. What kind of reason is that to give up a dream? I no longer fear math and science-- I have mastered the approach to them and they bend as water in my hands. I've already zoomed through two of those eight years. I've learned I'll have to be amiable and self-advocating, no matter the path that I choose.

But I might also want a farmhouse full of children, and public education is shit. I'd have to homeschool those children or find a private school (and what's the likelihood of a private school within reasonable distance of a farmhouse?) If I go to vet school, I'll be deep in debt and working. I'd need a stay-at-home spouse. Or to give it all up and be the stay-at-home spouse... quiet mornings of togetherness, simplicity, little feet.

And then botany... the great mystery. I don't even know exactly what working in that field entails, but it's a beautiful daydream that makes my heart swell. Pressed flowers, neat herbaria, treks through woods with presses under arms, cataloging, researching new secondary metabolites, giving presentations in front of other plant lovers-- it sounds wonderful. But I don't know if that's an accurate depiction. And how would that help people? Is that a career a mom can have too?

I don't know. I'm confused. There are so many paths I can take.

via Pinterest