clutching to the branches of indecision

the fig tree and the weight of choices in a woman's life

As a 33-year-old woman, I'm constantly trying to navigate the many choices life presents, balancing personal desires, societal expectations, and professional ambitions amidst lingering indecision.

I think of the words floating powerfully in Florence’s song, “King”: “we argue in the kitchen about whether to have children, about the world ending and the scale of my ambition…how much is art really worth?”

The many conversations and fights I’ve had with ex-lovers who could not understand my hunger for more, my need to put my ambitions and my work and my dreams above all else— how it’s lead me to leaving every single time. I’ve always known which fruit was mine for the taking.

It’s beginning to feel more murky now…

“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 read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath in 10th grade and was utterly consumed by it. It seemed to take all of my existential teenage angst and sum it up perfectly, paired with more complex concepts I had not yet experienced as a young woman. I felt pulled to pick it back up again in my 30’s.

This quote from the book consumes my every thought—the overwhelming choices Esther Greenwood faces in her life… as a symbol of the Fig Tree. Esther feels paralyzed by these possibilities because she fears that choosing one path means ultimately closing off all the others. In the metaphor, the figs shrivel and drop from the tree as Esther remains starved by indecision.

The realization of how limited our time is, and how swiftly it slips away, weighs heavily. I remember feeling a deep, disorienting sadness as a little one, each time we left a place, fully understanding it was the last time. The same can be said for me today, as an adult. I am hyper-aware of the present moment slowly slipping from my grasp. I watch Luna’s face turn white with each passing year, tears slipping down my cheeks as we crawl into bed, unable to comprehend a life where age consumes her. How quickly time passes, how little control or say we truly have in it all.

In all truth and embarrassment, there is a part of me that wishes I had gotten pregnant in my teens or twenties, back when I didn’t fully grasp the weight of that decision or the profound impact it would have on my life. Back when I wasn’t aware of generational trauma or how my parenting (or lack of) could affect the path of their life. Before I learned how to untangle the wrongs of the world in my body, to know that one day that baby would face many of those same painful experiences. To run full force into naiveté and grow my life around their appearance in my world, never knowing what it might have been like without a life tied to sticky fingerprints on my windowsills and endless meals to make. Endless sacrifice.

I know now that giving birth is so much more than having a child; it is a spiritual, emotional and physical upheaval of one’s life. I know too much. My naive nature is no longer sugarcoating the romanticization of the world. As a woman who runs two businesses and is working hard to continue scaling that ambition, the decision and indecision of it all feels impossible and much too big to hold— to one day wake up and just simply make that decision. To drop a bomb on my life and be prepared to deal with the aftermath. Will you ever feel ready for it when you know too much?

Instead, I find myself squeezing further into the crux of the fig tree, delicately balancing the core of my body weight against her trunk…witnessing yet another season pass by, unable to move. I stand on the beach at sunset, wringing my hands of the salt and sand, finally rid of my sorrows and my younger, papery skin. Nothing ever feels the same as it does the first time. I was loved here, once. I am still loved here, forever. A strange feeling knots up under my ribs, a longing I can’t yet place. A drumming in my legs and my feet whispering go, go, go. My feet are ready to go, ready to run, but my fingers dig deeper and deeper into the branch I cling to. I watch the fig begin to wither. I notice there are less blooms.

I picture myself sprinting breathlessly through the midnight library, seeing visions of 15-year old Sam giving up her softball scholarship and caving from pressure— 18-year old Sam turning down her admission to Pratt to stay with a boy who was a dead end — 22-year old Sam hesitantly grinning ear to ear as she says yes to the same boy now kneeling before her — 28-year old Sam unpacking the boxes in what feels like her first home after finally being released from the grip of it all—

I want to flip through the pages and notice exactly where each micro decision and the never-ending pivots lead me… would I stay in my hometown and marry him? would I get my PhD in art history in Oxford? how far would I take myself from this current storyline?

As time passes, the allure of endless possible lives begins to fade. To be fully present is to understand that the past could have taken you in countless directions with countless outcomes, but you wouldn’t want to know them—because the present moment wouldn't exist without the exact path you took. To accept that each decision we make in our lives, big or small, will impact the duration, destination, and experience of our soul’s journey.

I’ve had a lot of say in that journey. Much more than others. I’ve said no, I’ve left painfully, I’ve lingered in regret. But in the end, most of it has always been my choice.

I understand the power in that.

This knowing keeps me cornered in the trunk of the olive tree. I’ve let go of the daydreams that involve turning back time to settle the score or clean up the record or nurse the wounds of what could have been. But understanding that my current free-will decisions will extend their roots deeply through the next phase of my life, altering it forever? It seems too big of a weight to bear. It paralyzes me.

If I choose to bring children into this lifetime, does it knowingly prevent me from reaching my long-term goals of having my paintings hung in the Whitney? Will my time be instead spent rocking, nursing, packing lunches, attending soccer games? Will I long for the days when I could pack my suitcase, kiss Luna goodbye as I leave her for two weeks with a friend… to hop on a flight to Europe and wander until my legs are sore? I am all too aware of the disproportionate burden on women to handle the majority of household and childcare responsibilities, to gravely fear never quenching my intense desire for personal fulfillment because of it. If having children costs me my freedom and my career, will I one day regret growing a loving family as I age and lose friends, lovers, and those who have become my chosen family? If I decided to leave everything and everyone I know in the life I’ve built in the South, would greater things await me? Would my life be more impactful dedicated fully to my own growth and education, in order to be of greatest service to those around me? Or perhaps my children would grow to be the greatest life’s work, an unimaginable manifestation of all the things I’ve known and loved.

It’s impossible to know.

The only truth I can stand on at the moment is knowing that standing still, frozen with this unbearable indecision, is getting me nothing but shriveling, wilted figs. I refuse to continue sitting here, three- four-ten- years from now, nervously pressing my body to her trunk as the ground fills with piles of rotten fruit.

Most of my 20’s, I sat in the crux of that tree, terrified of the relationship that was being built around me. Knowing it was not right, it would never be safe, and I would ultimately need to muster up the courage to scale down the side of the trunk, empty-handed, and build a new life. I lost nearly 7 years of my life to that indecision before finally jumping ship.

I will never allow my life to become rotten fruit again.

We often convince ourselves that by sitting perfectly still within the safest part of the tree, we are beating the passing of time. That if we can just hold still enough and not shake the branches, no fruit will be lost. We long to be the magician who stops time.

It’s a lie we tell ourselves to prevent the uncomfortable thing, the most painful thing, the unthinkable thing— to crawl decidedly out on the branch and boldly pick the life we want.

No matter what form of safety it means leaving behind.

To be alive is to know it is impossible to climb down the tree safely, arms overflowing with dozens of figs that we hoard for our own procession. It is knowing there will always be unchosen fruit, and that the gift of life is only having the power to hold any of that choice in our hands, at all.

I cannot spend my life obsessing over each branch, extending endlessly before me… or all I’ll be left with is a fruitless tree.