My Fig Tree (Mirror Life)
There is a pair of eyes that has been watching me since I turned fifteen- since the world turned real, and sharp. I feel them on me in the cities, near universities, among chattering groups of adults (adults?) my age, in concert halls and cafes. I feel the eyes of her. Not judging, I don't think. Watching. I can't feel much from her, just that she's there, living alongside me. Another fig on the tree, the same lifeforce feeding us both.
When you look into the water of a magical place and see your reflection, yes, there, that's her picture. Among the ripples, upside down. Different. Flipped. She looks almost like me, not quite but exactly me but almost not. Lighter, her shoulders lower. She kept the short hair I grew out too quickly and the nose piercing I said I never wanted anyway. I like her thrifted sweater, an eclectic olive or navy blue with red poppies or multicolor stripes. A bold choice, a daring to look at her and she doesn't shy from it. She knows, after all, she is worth the fuss. She has friends too, great ones. I feel them when our worlds get thin, their love seeping through time and space. Their love for her, deep and true and as warm as an ever-returning embrace. They love her, they love her, they really do.
We feel each other but never meet. We are a splitting branch, herself a fruit too far from me to see. Her life runs parallel to mine, a network of choices so far beyond my reach.
She is me, and she chose differently.
How am I twenty and married to a life I never wanted? I wish I could explain it all to you. But all you must know is this: I have chosen the life my parents approve most of and never truly considered anything else in fear of their hatred. At night in the quiet of my room I think about her, and it's about that time now.
I often feel I am living a lie. Like I woke up one day and decided I want the easiest, most pain free life possible. Aren't kids my age supposed to tame their fears? Change terrifies me and opening up to the fear of moving forward keeps me chained to a life I never wanted, a life of simplicity and appeasing my family, killing myself slowly each day to avoid their pain of my betrayal. I believe the fear of disappointing my parents has effected me far greater than I ever thought possible. I feel like I am a child still, an unformed thing at the helm of a life in an unnavigable storm.
I've been thinking a lot more about her lately, my Fig. I want to reach for her and sink my teeth in. I want to want to go to college, I want to start off by saying who I am and what I believe in and be honest for once, no secrets anymore. I want the burden of fear expelled like bad fruit cut from the vine. I want friends who know exactly who I am and to love me for it, I want to go places my family doesn't, I want to be alone for a while, I want to wear ugly clothes and stop wearing makeup and give up the wondering about how many men each day stare at my chest.
I am not a miserable wretch, I swear. I don't hate my life, and I'm not a trapped bug under some glass. The good thing about life is you can choose over and over, yes yes. I'm simply angry where I am now is so simple, so foreign yet all too familiar. Wake up, work a job I have no passion for, sleep. And the knowing that some desires are simply unattainable as the life I have now is no environment for them hurts. I feel I am being swept toward mundanity because life demands commitment one way or another, chosen path or not. The pain is a dull throbbing, but it does stab through me now and again, the reminder that I chose a blackening fig so my family could enjoy the ripeness of theirs.
But she's there. I feel her enjoying her night, not wondering about what it would be like to be anywhere else. She is peaceful and laughing with people who know her and full of matcha and baked goods and is just a little tired from writing all day. She loves her apartment and the little garden on the deck, as simple as it all feels (it if far from simple to me). She is at peace in her body and her mind. Her family is far, but she loves them and keeps up with them. They are disappointed she's not here working with them, yes, but it doesn't sting anyone as much anymore. How can it when she is surrounded by so much love?
I think we all have figs, and it's not about the fact we aren't them. It's the pretending there is no difference, the faking it that you are them in every way you can. If your fig writes, write. If she bakes or dances or paints or laughs more than you do, then bake and paint and dance and laugh when you can. I think it's all in the effort, the reaching for the fig rather than the licking the juice from your fingers.
“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.”
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