Fig
relinquishing the fantasy of the singular self
I keep thinking about the fig.
Not Sylvia Plath’s metaphorical fig exactly, although of course that too—the one hanging among the other plumped with potential selves that every 20 something seems to reference at some point between their first identity crisis and their first cigarette. I did not like the Bell Jar. I tried to like it, but the despair was old news to me.
No this was an actual fig, floating toward me in a river.
The river had been an impulsive decision. Ev and I had been hiking in the kind of dense heat that leaves you feeling animal. We stripped to our underwears, squealing into the flow of late May’s snow melt like two feral pigs, alive, wet and quite possibly happy.
I was waist deep when it floated up to me like any other piece of debris, green skinned and split. The symbolism was annoying because it was casual. I dislike an overused metaphor. I dislike figs. I picked it up instinctively and tossed it to shore.
It felt impossible not to assign meaning to the thing though I am slow to trust those that assign meaning to everything. I was one of those people and let me tell you it is an exhausting way to live a life. I’ve spent an entire afternoon lost in deciphering what God had to say to me through a crumpled fortune cookie note in an abandoned Big Lots parking lot. I also do not believe entirely in coincidences. What is one to do with the contradictions that make one a person?
I’ve spent the majority of my twenties in immense indecision. I’ve covered the same tattoo twice. I altered my wedding dress sleeves multiple times only to deeply regret both versions later. I’ve dyed my hair platinum blonde and then immediately to an unfortunate greenish black. In high school I told a boy I’d go to prom with him and then changed my mind 3 separate times. I’m pretty sure he is gay now. I have filled notebooks with venn diagrams and pros and cons lists of quite possibly every moderately suitable thing to be. I’ve taken the personality quizzes that liken your youness to a number or a combination of carefully selected letters (I’m a 4w5, INFP, turbulent).
At the ripe age of 20 I interned at an organic farm and remember calling my mom one afternoon after picking tomatoes long enough to turn hands sticky green and told her, in earnest, that I thought I might be happiest doing exactly this forever. There was a long pause on the phone. I do not blame her. I would have done much worse as a mother. It is terrifying to think about your daughter actively choosing a life without insurance. Actively choosing to minor in philosophy. The world expects us to make a decision on who we are eventually.
For the next 10 years I kept waiting for work to become fulfilling enough to justify my existence. The intellectual part. The creative part. The outdoor enthusiast part. The poetic part. The wandering part. The empathetic part. The sarcastic annoyed bitch part. I wanted my labor as proof that I had used my one wild and precious life correctly. I wanted it all, in search of something slightly cinematic, narratively cohesive, always, always, fueled by passion. I pursued desperately, one true calling, over and over again waiting for the internal trumpeters to sound, here it is, this is it! Instead I became a walking cacophony of almosts.
My professional identity has become difficult to summarize at the proverbial party:
a woman scooping cedar mulch onto rich naked people in the name of detox at a boogie spa in the woods
a sexual health outreach educator. Spiritually dubious
a plant store associate for exotic and rare plants. A hazy chapter
a Network Manager and non-profit baddie surviving almost entirely off of cortisol
a person with a pension working for the govt. Great on paper, terrible for the soul
a person without a pension and without a job. Severely self pitying
a farm crew member, again but with more acreage, more labor. The kind of work that left you walking funny the next day.
a farm store associate. I remember loading compost into the SUV of the director from the county job I once held and watched him try, unsuccessfully, to contain his bewilderment
a 9-5er, now working in the strange world of health care compliance
I have health insurance again but it has such a high deductible I still have yet to check my thyroid. Them’s the breaks I suppose. The job is actually ok. My confession is I might go so far as to say I like it. Maybe partly because I have enough free time to write but also because there is something deeply relieving about the black and whiteness of it. The clarity. Pass or fail. Accounted for or missing. While life continues to color outside the lines, the cells of excel offer such kind parameters. Once you understand the formulas, everything else falls into place. If only the formula for life were that easy.
I want a slow life and a fast life, beautiful things and enough stability not to romanticize suffering anymore. I want to be the woman that grows tomatoes and disappears for hours. The woman with nice pens and a fat 401k. The woman that is a loving wife and one day mother. The woman that creates things for the sake of creating, free from the pressures of extracting profit from everything she loves. The woman who finally stops taking bites out of figs just to spit them out.
A few weeks after the river fig I found myself eating alone at my favorite rural no nonsense saloon style steakhouse complete with signs like beware of pickpockets and loose women and we don’t call 911, the juke box pumping out 90’s country essentials. A taxidermy deer with eyelashes watched over me, my sweating Buffalo Trace and my dog eared poetry book. It’s places like these that bring me a resounding sense of peace. Here, people tend to know exactly who they are, or at least know better than to pretend otherwise. The bartender was an older blonde woman with deeply wrinkled skin and a nicotine laugh.“Whatcha having tonight honey?” The question shook me up. Maybe because I have become acutely aware of how badly I have long wanted simple, clear answers about myself. What do you do? What are you working towards? What kind of person are you? I ordered a ribeye, medium.
I keep thinking about the fig.
Not necessarily because it represented indecision, but that in some strange way it resisted singularity. The fig had already left the tree. It was both unripe and split. It was no longer waiting to become something. It was already in motion, drifting downstream, carrying all its contradictions with it and straight to me.
