The fig tree

I found myself awake again at 2 a.m., feeling the weight of everything I was supposed to be, everything I wasn’t, and everything I was.

My laptop screen glowed with tabs I’d opened and abandoned: transfer programs, job listings, and short courses I was interested enough in to explore but never to commit to. With the world of possibility at my fingertips, I was paralyzed by endless choices.

I remember being 7 at a birthday party, when a clown asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I replied, “I’m too young to know that.” The microphone echoed my words as the adults laughed, amused by my childlike naivete. I went on running with toys and candy in hand, and life went on.

It was a small, harmless moment that stayed with me longer than it should have.

I became an overachiever, with lines of 9, leadership roles, and carefully rehearsed ambitions. I learned to fill every gap of silence with something productive. Rest felt like guilt, and guilt meant failure.

My teachers said I had potential, while my family called it passion. Yet, no one called it fear. I was caught between deadlines and dopamine, convincing myself that each achievement was a promise of happiness.

This rehearsal in my head blurred the lines between performance and reality. I shaped myself to fit into roles that received the most praise. My passions were dictated by what others applauded. Productivity felt like passion, and passion meant praise.

By 16, I was burning out, and I didn’t know how to stop. I told myself that exhaustion was proof of potential, and that if I worked even harder, I’d finally become someone worth being proud of. In my mind, burnout was simply part of growing up.

When I was finally diagnosed with major depressive disorder, it felt cathartic. Finally, there was a reason behind my exhaustion and the inability to do what I supposedly loved.

I wanted the diagnosis to fix me and make sense of everything. But recovery was painstaking and often lonely. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed, followed by nights making goals I’d never accomplish. I was torn between polar opposites.

My depression was not only a cause of suffering or my diagnosis a cure; it was a symptom of a greater issue within me. A diagnosis didn’t make life easier; it only made me realize how much of my self-worth had been tied to being capable in the eyes of others.

Now, at 21, I can no longer use my youth as an excuse for my indecision. My dream university slipped through my fingers, and my grades became a reflection of my demotivation. The pressure of becoming something broke me down into nothing.

My friends are already four years ahead, graduation-bound, with goals and certainty. I smile proudly, pretending to understand that kind of certainty. But I’m still stuck between choices, afraid to leave the limbo I have created.

Sometimes, I wish young Sofia had just said she wanted to be a doctor, teacher, or astronaut. Anything certain, anything safe. Anything but the truth.

Time moves on, but I don’t. As I watch my batchmates march forward, I remain on an empty stage, arms outstretched to another future lost.

Sometimes, I think of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy. Each fig is a version of myself that might have been: the teacher, the lawyer, the doctor, or the girl who figured it out. I stand beneath it, watching the figs ripen and rot before I can choose one.

Each fig is within reach, but I hesitate. Maybe it’s the fear of choosing wrong or losing all other possibilities. Or maybe it’s grief, for every self I will never become and every passion I will someday forget.

I used to think that indecision meant failure. Now, I believe it’s just mourning what could have been or could be.

I still don’t know what I want to be. But maybe that’s okay. These days, I try to forgive myself for not being extraordinary. I write, not to prove something, but to remember what it’s like to feel alive. I live because time moves on.

With each withered fig, a sapling blooms anew. I will keep reaching, and savor my fruit as if it were the sweetest of them all.

In many ways, I am still that 7-year-old girl who doesn’t know what she wants to be. But unlike me, she was not afraid to simply be.

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Sofia C. Perea, 21, is a student from Quezon City. She writes to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.