There is a metaphor in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar that has stayed with me for years.

A fig tree.

Every fig represents a different future.

A career.

A relationship.

A family.

Travel.

Success.

Adventure.

A completely different version of yourself.

You stand underneath the tree wanting all of them.

But choosing one means not choosing another.

And while you hesitate, the figs begin to fall.

I think about that image often.

Because maybe one of the hardest things about choosing a life isn’t wondering whether you’ve made the wrong choice.

Maybe it’s accepting that every real choice requires another possibility to die.

And sometimes that feels a lot like grief.

You can’t taste a mango if you remain everything

I was thinking about this recently in a slightly strange way.

Imagine that before becoming a person, you’re just some kind of infinite possibility.

No body.

No country.

No age.

No history.

No limitations.

You could theoretically be anything.

But if you want to know what a mango tastes like, something has to happen.

You need a mouth.

A tongue.

A body.

You need to exist somewhere where you can find a mango.

You need to become this particular person, standing in this particular place, at this particular moment.

Suddenly you’re no longer infinite.

You’re specific.

Limited.

But now you can taste the mango.

And maybe that’s the strange thing about limitation.

We tend to think of it as the thing preventing us from having everything.

But limitation is also what allows us to experience anything.

You can’t live every possible life.

You can only live one moment at a time.

One city at a time.

One body.

One decision.

One version of today.

Choosing is what turns possibility into life.

Which sounds beautiful.

Until you realise choosing also means leaving things behind.

But then there’s the person you already were

We talk a lot about changing our lives.

New chapter.

New era.

New me.

We make it sound clean.

Exciting.

Almost aesthetic.

But I’ve changed enough times now to know that becoming someone new can also feel incredibly sad.

Because you’re not only moving towards something.

You’re leaving someone behind.

A version of yourself built a life around certain ideas.

She had dreams.

Habits.

Standards.

Plans.

Things she thought would make her happy.

Ways she imagined love.

Ways she imagined success.

Ways she imagined adulthood.

And maybe those things were exactly what she needed at the time.

Maybe they helped her survive.

Maybe they gave her direction.

Then one day you look around and realise:

I don’t think I want all of this anymore.

And that’s confusing.

Because what happens to the person who did?

The strange place between identities

I think there’s a particular kind of discomfort that happens when the old version of you no longer fits, but the new one isn’t fully real yet.

You know what you don’t want.

You’re beginning to understand what you might want.

But there isn’t much evidence.

The old identity has history.

Proof.

Photographs.

Relationships.

Habits.

Stories.

People who know you that way.

The new identity doesn’t have any of that.

The new identity doesn’t have evidence yet. It has intention. And those aren’t the same thing.

So you stand somewhere between the two.

And sometimes that space feels exciting.

Other times it feels like you’ve completely lost your mind.

You can feel lost.

Frustrated.

Sad.

Confused.

You can start wondering whether you’re going backwards.

And going backwards becomes incredibly tempting because at least the old version of you knows where everything is.

She knows the rules.

Even if you don’t want her life anymore, you know how to live it.

The new life?

No fucking idea.

Maybe that’s one reason change can feel like grief.

You’re not only losing circumstances.

Sometimes you’re losing familiarity with yourself.

Old dreams don’t disappear on command

For a long time, I imagined adulthood in a particular way.

Love.

Marriage.

Family.

A home.

Certain scenes repeated in my head for years.

Ten years is a long time to imagine something.

And then your life changes.

You change.

Your priorities change.

Suddenly other things become louder.

Success.

Travel.

Friends.

Projects.

Freedom.

Building something of your own.

Experiences you haven’t had yet.

And maybe you genuinely want those things.

But the old dream doesn’t simply receive the memo and politely leave.

Sometimes it’s still sitting there.

So… when are we meeting someone?

When are we getting married?

What about the family?

And then you have to ask a question that is surprisingly difficult:

Is this still my dream?

Or have I carried it for so long that I forgot I’m allowed to put it down?

Desire or script?

I don’t think the useful question is:

Did I ever want this?

Of course I did.

Past versions of us aren’t idiots just because we’ve changed.

The better question might be:

Do I still want this now?

And even then, the answer might not be simple.

Because there’s a difference between desire and script.

Maybe I still deeply want to share my life with someone.

Maybe I still want love.

Maybe I still want family.

But perhaps the script around those desires can change.

Meet someone by this age.

Date for this long.

Get married.

Live this kind of life.

Reach this milestone.

Then this one.

Then this one.

And if it doesn’t happen in that order, something has gone wrong.

Maybe I don’t have to kill the desire.

Maybe I only need to release the script.

Those are very different things.

One says:

I don’t want love anymore.

The other says:

I don’t know what love has to look like anymore.

There’s freedom in that.

And also terror.

Because again:

Blank page.

Maybe becoming isn’t about starting over

Sometimes we talk about reinvention as if we need to burn everything.

Delete the old version.

Start again.

Become someone completely new.

But I don’t think that’s how it works.

Changing yourself feels more like moving houses.

You open every drawer.

Every cupboard.

Every box.

And suddenly you have to decide what comes with you.

Some things make you think:

Why the fuck have I been carrying this for ten years?

Throw it away.

Some things surprise you.

You thought you’d outgrown them.

Then you pick them up and realise:

No.

This still feels like home.

So you bring them.

Maybe that’s what identity is.

Not preserving every version of yourself forever.

But not murdering them either.

Sorting.

Choosing.

Keeping.

Releasing.

Changing your mind.

Taking something back out of the box because actually, yes, you still want it.

There doesn’t have to be one dramatic moment when you announce:

This is who I am now.

Maybe sometimes it’s just:

Okay. Who the fuck am I now?

And then living long enough to find out.

Some lives will remain unlived

I think this is the part I’ve struggled with the most.

There will always be lives I don’t choose.

Versions of me that will never exist.

Cities where I could have stayed.

People I could have loved.

Jobs I could have accepted.

Countries I could have moved to.

Children I could have had.

Businesses I could have built.

People I might have become if I’d made one decision differently.

And sometimes I think we treat those unlived lives like evidence that something went wrong.

But maybe they aren’t.

Maybe they’re simply the cost of becoming specific.

I can’t be every Marcia.

I can only be this one.

And being this one means some other versions disappear.

That’s sad.

I think we’re allowed to admit that.

Not every ending needs to become:

Thank God that didn’t happen.

Sometimes something could have been beautiful.

And you still don’t choose it.

Sometimes a life can be good and still not be yours.

Sometimes you can grieve something without wanting it back.

The fig still has to be picked

That’s what I understand differently now about the fig tree.

For years, the frightening part of that metaphor was losing the figs.

All those lives.

All those possibilities.

All those versions of yourself disappearing while you try to decide.

But now I think there is something else frightening too.

Never choosing one.

Because possibility feels safe.

As long as you haven’t chosen, nothing has completely died.

Everything could still happen.

But nothing is really happening either.

Eventually, you have to become specific.

Pick something.

Taste it.

Live inside it.

Find out whether you like it.

And if you don’t?

Maybe you choose again.

You won’t return to infinite possibility.

Life doesn’t work backwards like that.

You’ll choose from wherever you are now.

With more information.

More history.

A different version of yourself making the decision.

Maybe that’s enough.

I don’t need to be loyal to every woman I’ve been

I used to think consistency meant something important about character.

If I said I wanted something, I should still want it.

If I believed something, changing my mind felt suspicious.

If I had spent years building towards a life, abandoning it felt like failure.

But maybe loyalty to yourself doesn’t mean obeying every decision a previous version of you made.

Maybe it means listening when the current version says:

This doesn’t fit anymore.

I can love the woman who wanted something different.

I can understand why she wanted it.

I can even grieve the life she imagined.

Without forcing myself to live it just because she spent years dreaming about it.

She got me here.

She doesn’t have to decide everything that happens next.

And maybe that’s the question I’m learning to ask now.

Not:

What did I say I wanted?

Not:

What would make the story look consistent?

Not:

What life would prove that all my previous choices were correct?

But something much simpler.

And much harder.

If nobody knew I had ever wanted this — if I didn’t have to be consistent with any previous version of myself — would I still choose it today?