that could've been me

learning how to grieve the lives we never lived

no one warned us that infinite choice would feel less like freedom and more like drowning. we were told we could be anything. they forgot to tell us that choosing means grieving everything else.

Sylvia Plath’s fig tree metaphor from The Bell Jar compares life to a tree full of ripe figs, each one representing a different future. The narrator wants them all, but because she can’t choose, she stands still, and the figs slowly rot and fall. It becomes a quiet way of showing how endless possibility, especially for young women, can turn into paralysis, fear, and grief over the lives we never live.

“you can be anything” was supposed to be empowering. but when every door is open, every step feels permanent. choosing one life feels like killing ten others. so you stand there trying to pick the perfect fig and forget that time is moving. freedom turns into fear.

you don’t just build a life — you bury other ones. and that grief is silent, because technically nothing “bad” happened. but something was still lost. there are versions of you that will never exist, not because you failed, but because you chose something else.

the figs that rot aren’t just “opportunities.” they are delayed dreams. unfinished versions of you. energy that grew tired of waiting. you don’t even notice them falling until one day you’re exhausted and can’t explain why.

time just keeps passing, softly, politely, relentlessly, until one day you realise some doors didn’t close. they just aren’t there anymore.

no one teaches you how to grieve a life you never lived. there is no funeral. no goodbye. just a faint ache when you think:

that could’ve been me.

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