From chapter 7 of 'The Bell Jar'

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.

My list grew longer.

I was a terrible dancer. I couldn't carry a tune, I had no sense of balance, and when we had to walk down a narrow board with our hands out and a book on our heads in gym class I always fell over. I couldn't ride a horse or ski, the two things I wanted to do most, because they cost too much money. I couldn't speak German or read Hebrew or write Chinese.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, 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 brillant professor, and other fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of of other lovers with queer names and off beat professions, and other fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I coudln't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this 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 loosing 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.

Plath, S. (1971). The Bell Jar. New York: HarpersCollins Publishers Inc.


"New Discovery" By Alex De Spain