Story of My (Charmed) Life.

I sit down tonight with a big fat glass of 7 Deadly Zins and my thoughts. Consider this a fair warning, I have a lot of them and they might be slurred. 😉

My mom recently started rereading The Bell Jar and I decided to do the same being that we have three copies of it in our “library”. Stumbling upon this excerpt, I literally got chills. Okay, maybe not chills but it definitely hit close to home. This excerpt is so eerily on-point I had to blog about it.

“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)

My irrational fear in life is falling in one of those restaurant food delivery holes in the sidewalk. My one real fear in life is choosing wrong, again. Those who know me know that I am not an anxious person. I don’t even think I know what stress feels like. Yet everyday as I sit and apply for jobs I am overcome with a feeling of fear. I am so scared of choosing wrong again and ending up in a situation where the only light in my days was my friend sitting three cubes away. I’m sure this all sounds melodramatic but it’s honestly how I felt. Of course there were days when my coworkers made me laugh, days when I argued for something and was right and even days when I wasn’t terrified of the boss man. But there wasn’t a day in those nine months that I didn’t think I should have gone to law school. I recently wrote about risks and believe it or not, I am happy I risked it all. In the end choosing “wrong” lead me even closer to myself and what I want. Or at least I think it did…

What do I want? This is where all the “fig branches” start creeping towards me. One fig is law school, and another fig is tech PR, and another fig is traveling around the world with Ashley, and another fig is taking the next sales job I get, and another fig is pursuing writing, and another fig is creative and another and another. I sit underneath my own fig tree desperately trying to decipher which branch is a hobby and which is a career. Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life. And my fear lies in choosing one, the wrong one and losing the chance for all the rest.

Some days these limitless choices are burdens and other days they are glistening opportunities. Oh the “hard” life of a post-grad. I realize I don’t have to make any real decisions quite yet. Law school acceptances don’t go out until next Spring. And on the job front, I’ll likely take the first job I’m offered. And writing won’t even become an option if I never get the courage to show people this very blog…Whatever I decide and wherever I go I know it will be secondary to the people in my life who got me here–my family and best friends. Because on days when I am so simultaneously excited and confused, I am grateful to have such supportive people cheering me on.