Fig Trees and Girl Blogs

A young woman's ramblings

Question: how many times does a young woman need to read The Bell Jar before turning into the most utterly insufferable, obnoxiously introspective, tragically beautiful version of herself? 

Answer: once is enough. 

It might be the nature of the beast that a girl’s post-grad blues causes the fig tree to become an ever-present fixture of her mind. Settling into adulthood, I find myself facing a dead end or, moreso, a tunnel painted onto a solid concrete wall (in this scenario I’m being chased through a cartoon). I hit the wall with a resounding splat.  

For those unfamiliar, the fig tree analogy comes from Sylvia Plath’s largely autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. The main character imagines a tree with fat purple figs on the end of each branch, representing a different path leading to a different future. She is stuck. She doesn’t know which she wants, or which to choose. Picking one path means sacrificing the rest. Before she can decide, all of the figs shrivel up and die. Her paralysis leaves her unable to make any choice at all; time expires and with it dies the future. 

Plath’s expertly crafted metaphor strikes a razor-sharp chord with young people. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. Now we have to figure out what to do with it. Choosing a path is overwhelming, and is a dilemma predictably predicated by a sudden lack of structure. This year will be the first time in my entire life that I am not in school. 

Conventional wisdom tells us that the next move is to work our way up the ladder until we reach mid-level manager-hood. Given the grim projections on the likelihood of Gen Z’s economic successes, we can assume we’ll remain there until death. If we’re lucky, we’ll retire with about a decade left. More than likely we’ll be old, decrepit, our energy depleted, and burdened by the general health problems that inevitably come with age. At the risk of sounding cynical, spoiled, naive, and lazy, I simply don’t want to do that. 

If working at an office until I die is the only option, the future seems bleak and bare. It’s not that working is so awful. It isn’t. Moreover, leaving the house to fufill a responsibility is a necessary component to one’s sense of purpose and pride (and not in a bootlicker kind of way). Still, I often find myself wishing I was doing literally anything else when I am at work. Apart from staring at Excel for eight hours a day, it makes me wonder. How do I make something of myself? How do I make sure I don’t waste my time here on Earth? How can I be happy? How do I pick?

The fig tree looks different for everyone who sees it. I want to be a writer, a serious writer, but I also want to be a schoolteacher, but also a career woman, and most of all a mother, and there simply isn’t enough time to do it all. You can’t live every life. And so, to prevent the figs from shriveling up, one must choose. One then finds themselves wanting to choose all of them. Then entering a state of catatonia when they don't know which they should choose. Rinse and repeat. 

Here’s my solution. While you may not be able to live, fully live every life, maybe you can live through aspects of all of them. You can pick and choose what you want to do from each. If the essence of life is living, (that is, doing), you can fit different parts of the doing into your days -- given you can find the time, energy, and motivation to do it.  

I guess this isn’t all that groundbreaking. The Reductress headline would read “Woman Discovers Having a Hobby.” But putting work into something outside of work kind of is. 

Fatally, finding time, energy, and motivation seems an increasingly impossible task. When I need to sustain myself, i.e. build a life out of a made-up, unjust, and unforgiving system, how does expending energy on writing mediocre blog posts fit into it? Is it worth the time? Can I find the motivation? How about the confidence? The courage? 

This, really, is the crux of the fig tree: all that I could be and all that I can, if only I could find the will to do it. I want to be an artist. I want to do something worthwhile. So if that’s the case, why not embrace mediocrity? 

If I were to create art, truly great art, what then? Would I be Sylvia Plath? No, because there is only one Sylvia. And I don’t want to stick my head in an oven. Then would I be Joan Didion? How about Frida? Lana? Nina? The unknown is far too unknown; the future teases me with uncertainty.

I’ll go down a rabbit hole, and wonder if I am a narcissist because what is an artist if not someone who craves admiration. I’ll self-diagnose with ten different issues a day to explain why I feel the way I do. As if sadness, anxiety, and doubt are not simply side effects of the human experience. Or are they? Is it not normal to be constantly at battle with oneself, in one's mind? Or am I just a Pisces? Is my mental discomfort the product of being a young woman starting her life? Or is it the family history of mental illness? Does a truly happy, truly content person exist? And one day when I am old and gray will I have ever gotten around to it? I can’t wait to find out. 

I’ll gain consciousness in the middle of my pity party and a fleeting feeling of bile climbing up my throat will befall me, disgusted by my own self-induced victimhood. What is whitegirl living rent free in her parent’s Brooklyn apartment fucking complaining about? Shut up bitch. Quit your fucking whining. There are horrors occuring in this world that are so far beyond your comprehension it’d make your eyes pop out of your head. Do you ever think about anything outside of yourself? Do you never think about anything outside of yourself? Anything not so self-aggrandazing, self congratulating, self absorbed? There is war, famine, death, all the rest, and yet you’re crying about a fig tree. You realize this, right? 

I’ll ask myself if I am even valid in my pain. So my strife exists in the philosophical, psychological, mental state of being and this is a sign of my privilege. And though it is not unacknowledged it exists all the same. Am I allowed to be sad? Am I allowed to feel lost? I really don’t think anyone would say that I’m not. Then I’d feel like an asshole. A jerk often does. 

So stop thinking about yourself so much. Stop with the compulsive narcissism. Stop equating your leftover teenage angst with a legitimate personality disorder. Realize that these young years are but a drop in the bucket, and if you never go for it then you’ll never have gone for it. What do I know?  

This, I do know. There’s got to be more to life than nine to five monotony. I am not intending to make a claim against capitalism, nor any whiney statement that underlines my tender age, rather, a challenge to myself. I can learn to crochet, play the guitar, pick up tennis and put it down just as fast, but none of these things allow me to live my passion. Express my soul. 

Here we are, Internet! Blogosphere. 21st Century forum. Poor man’s platform. Here, forthcoming, is my creative outlet. Because I can create, and it’s easier than ever to have an outlet. Because in what world can I be expected to have a dream and refuse myself the chance to reach for it? What a world indeed. 

I welcome you to the girl blog. Nihilist Femcel Outpost. The name I’ve chosen is cheeky, if a bit ironic, and may or may not be relevant to the writing I intend to put up here. Out there. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Guess you’ll have to keep reading to find out.