So Sorry, Sylvia. The Fig Tree Was Never Meant to Bear For Just One Season

This isn’t a story about picking the perfect fig. It’s a story about surviving the seasons in between. This is why I believe Sylvia Plath’s analogy doesn't tell the whole story.

Right now, as I sit on the edge of graduating college, I don’t feel the excitement everyone keeps expecting from me. I feel exhausted. More defeated than triumphant.

It’s not that I’m not proud—I am. I worked harder than I ever thought possible, juggling a brutal work schedule, sacrificing relationships, giving up pieces of myself to chase something bigger. But when I look around at what’s next, I don’t feel relief. I feel lost. I feel change pressing down on me in a way that’s both terrifying and necessary.

And maybe that’s why Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy, beautiful as it is, doesn’t sit right with me.

“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.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

There’s no doubt Plath’s words are powerful. They're haunting. They feel, at times, almost too real.

But respectfully—I disagree.

The fig tree, as she described it, isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete.
It doesn’t account for seasons.
It doesn’t account for regrowth.
It doesn’t account for the fact that life—real life—is not one desperate, irreversible choice.
It's a long, messy, imperfect blooming process.

---

There’s a mythology built around working hard while you're young.
That if you just sacrifice enough—hours, health, relationships—you’ll eventually be rewarded with freedom. That pain now means payoff later.

And for a while, I believed it. I wanted to believe it. And part of me thinks I still do.

Over the past few years, I poured myself into work. I worked 45 to 55 hour weeks in the chaos of the fashion industry, trying to prove myself indispensable in a world that prides itself on being unrelenting.
I pushed friends and family away—not because I didn’t love them, but because I didn’t know how to ask them to wait for me.
I let my passions—the ones that once made me feel most alive—collect dust.
Horses, travel, even basic care for my mind and body.
It all got sacrificed on the altar of later.

Later, when I’m successful. Later, when I’m proud. Later, when I’m free.

But what happens when later comes and you’re too tired to move?
What happens when the sacrifices were real, but the payoff doesn't look like the fantasy you built to survive the sacrifice?

Instead of moving to a bright new city or planning the dream trip I thought would mark this "milestone," I’m staying exactly where I am.
Same hometown. Same streets. Moving back into my mother’s house, too drained to start a new chapter with the grand flourish I once imagined.
It’s humbling. It’s defeating.
It’s real.

And it’s why I know Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy—while poetic—is dangerous if we take it as gospel.
Because life is not just one chance to choose.
Because you don't rot because you made one choice.
Because sitting still doesn't mean the figs fall forever.

Sometimes sitting still means you are gathering the strength to climb again.

I am not angry at my job. I am not angry at the industry.
I am not even angry at myself. In fact, I love my job, my community, the legacy I have built for myself.

But I am angry at the idea that we are supposed to suffer endlessly with no acknowledgment of the weight we’re carrying.

I am angry at how easy it is to romanticize burnout until you’re the one sitting in a parking lot at 2 AM with nothing left in you but a silent scream.
I am angry that young people are told to "have it all" but never given the language to grieve the things we had to let wither while we were surviving.

But even anger can be fertile.
Even exhaustion can be the soil where something new grows.

The tree, battered and scorched, still knows how to bud again.
And maybe this time, I won't be climbing it like I'm running out of time.
Maybe this time, I’ll let the figs grow in their own messy, unexpected, and stubborn ways.

Maybe this time, I’ll believe that missing one season doesn’t mean I missed the harvest.
Maybe this time, I’ll believe that life doesn’t end when one branch goes bare.
Maybe this time, I’ll trust myself enough to wait for the next bloom.

Because it’s coming.
Even if I can't see it yet.
Even if all I can do right now is rest and reflect.

So if you’re reading this and you feel behind—
If you feel like you chose wrong, or waited too long, or worked yourself into a place you don’t recognize—
If you’re sitting in your car, your childhood bedroom, or your mother’s house feeling like the best parts of you are out of reach—

I want you to know: you didn't miss your chance.
You are not too late.
You are not broken.

You are simply between blooms.

Rest.
Water the roots you still have.
Trust that not everything beautiful announces itself right away.
Some seasons are silent.
Some seasons are about survival.

And some seasons, even when you can’t see them yet, are already on their way back to you.

For anyone else feeling like they missed their season—you didn't.
You're just between blooms.

Until next time,

NFM X