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I shake my head. But Tina doesn’t go away. She holds me. When I start crying, she strokes my hair. She tells me I’m okay.
“I’m not okay. I’m a ridiculous idiot.”
“Don’t talk about yourself that way.” She says it gently. “You’re ridiculously smart, and if you feel like this, there’s a good reason for it.”
I stumble off to bed half an hour later, where I cocoon myself in blankets. I lie in the dark, looking up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what Tina told me. After the shock, after the tears, I’m grateful for the dark of night and the weight of blankets. These are simple physical sensations. Uncomplicated. Impossible to misinterpret.
I try on sentences for size.
The thing about getting struck by lightning on the mountaintop is that your unthinking animal brain learns the wrong lesson. Never go above treeline.
There’s a reason I don’t want to test how much people care about me. There’s a reason I’m pushing Jay away, why I’m waffling between jobs that leave me feeling fundamentally dissatisfied. I’m not all in on myself.
Maybe I deserve to be. I turn this thought over. It scares me, but I don’t let go. Maybe this isn’t luck. Maybe good things don’t have to end.
It’s easier to express that thought when I put a maybe in front, but as I turn over the maybes in my head, I discover something else.
I don’t need the maybe.
I actually do deserve to be happy. I deserve to have people love me. I haven’t fought this hard, and come this far, to settle for a tentative maybe. I deserve to be ecstatic. I deserve to have people care for me. I don’t want to accept any less.
Most of the time I think of worst case scenarios—the catastrophes that could come. Right now, I swallow my fear, and I let myself daydream the best case instead.
I don’t want to drown in a job I don’t love just in case it turns into another better one. I don’t want to keep swallowing things that bother me while anxiety builds up in my stomach.
As for Jay… He’s right. Expectations are hope. I don’t know how to hope like this. I’m afraid to let myself believe that I deserve to have someone love me enough to change all his plans because he knew I’d be scared. But maybe, maybe… No, no maybe. I do deserve it.
I pull my laptop onto the bed. I look at my spreadsheet of jobs. I tried to reduce all of my worries and doubts and misgivings to numbers. I tried to put a price on how much I wanted to stay here so I could compare it to living in New York.
The truth is, I only have a spreadsheet because I’m not excited about any of my options. I’m letting numbers flip a coin for me. If I really, really wanted any of these, I would have already said yes.
Slowly, I select every line. My careful comparison of health care plans and salaries highlights in blue.
I hit delete, and every line disappears. My future is nothing but blank cells. It’s scary, but for the first time, I feel a tickle of excitement about what’s to come.
Just after midnight, I shed my blankets, get out of bed, and stub my toe on a chair while looking for my phone on its charger.
I had meant to send a text to someone else. But there’s a message from Jay waiting for me.
I was wrong, the message reads. Really wrong to expect this of you now. I keep waiting for you to tell me I’m enough, but tonight I had it backward. You were the one who needed to hear it tonight. You’re enough. You are. And that isn’t going to change.
I shut my eyes. Let myself feel my own feelings—everything from the fluttering fear that says, this will end to that deep still place inside me that whispers, maybe he’s right.
I read his message again, and I tell myself—firmly, because deep down, I’m still wavering—that I deserve someone who cares for me this much.
I think of my blank spreadsheet. I look at the blank space beneath this message. I don’t know how to respond. But maybe it’s okay to not know everything right away.
Thanks, I reply. I needed to hear that.
He’s asleep, as he should be. He doesn’t answer. And I have something else to do. I thumb through my contacts in the faint light from its screen. The one I’m looking for—Angela Choi—isn’t far down. I send her a message.
Do you have any time tomorrow?
She should be asleep, but…no, this is Anj. Sure. What do you need?
I think about all the things I want. That I deserve.
Then I write. I want to talk.
After much deliberation, I realize I have one last email to send. For the last few months, I’ve ignored my anxiety. Told myself I’d work it out. That I was better, and that if only I was strong enough, I wouldn’t need any more help.
But I don’t need to fight anxiety with nothing but willpower and sleepless nights. I have better things to do with my willpower. So I write to my old psychiatrist.
I’m graduating from college right now, and things are changing really fast. I’d like to make an appointment to talk about renewing my prescription until things normalize.
Thanks,
Maria.
* * *
Anj’s apartment is all too familiar. It’s not the same place we lived together, but it feels almost the same. That almost is because her cereal bowls are stacked in the sink, like she’s an actual adult.
The living room is still half aquariums.
“Hey,” says Anj. “What’s up?”
I rearrange a stack of prototype batteries to make room for me on the couch and sit. “I don’t want to dress up as a shark.”
She raises an eyebrow. “O…kay. And you came here at eight in the morning to tell me that?”
I take a deep breath. “Thing is, Anj? I kind of hate Lisa.”
Her eyes widen. She glances back at the aquariums, a worried look on her face. “Oh my god,” she whispers. “You know sharks can hear in the frequency of human voices, right?”
I shake my head. “I don’t really hate Lisa. I hate the way she makes me feel.”
Anj shakes her head in puzzlement.
“Our landlord said he was going to kick us out because of Lisa,” I say. “I have issues with getting kicked out of places I live. I like stability and I hate surprises. Lisa gave me nightmares.”
Anj blinks. She looks at Lisa. She looks back at me. “Oh,” she says slowly. “Oh. I knew something wasn’t right, but… Why didn’t you tell me? I could have made my dad keep her.”
I swallow. “I thought you might choose Lisa over me. And…if you were going to do that, I didn’t want to know.”
“Oh.” She looks utterly dazed. I’ve never seen her so confused. I was never jealous of her money, or her startups—but I am jealous of the fact that she takes being loved for granted. “Oh.” She’s privileged, not stupid. She figures it out.
She shoves aside a stack of tech manuals and hugs me. “Oh, no,” Anj says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ever made you feel that way. I get stuck in my own head.”
“I know.” I hug her back. “I really—honestly—don’t hold anything against you.”
“I would have moved her,” Anj says. “I love you and Lisa in totally different ways. But I love you just as much as Lisa.”
I can’t help myself. I start laughing.
“What?”
“No. It’s nothing.” I hug her back. And this time, it is.
“What else do you have going on today?”
I think of that blank spreadsheet. “Visiting my grandmother,” I say. “Visiting a friend of yours.”
“And?”
“And talking to a boy.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Okay. Well. Have fun.”
* * *
The Bay Area’s odd microclimates are such that the dark clouds and drizzle hovering over Berkeley have dissolved into brilliant blue skies and sunshine by the time I arrive in Palo Alto in the car I’ve borrowed from Blake.
Stanford University is almost exactly the opposite of Cal in every possible way. It’s a private school, where Berkeley is public. There are h
uge expanses of green grass and not nearly as many students. Where Cal is a mishmash of opposing architecture, Stanford was built on a plan. Every building looks like it’s part of a branded franchise of red roofs and sandstone arches.
I consult a map on my phone and make my way into a building. It’s not hard to find the right door.
Professor Dan van Tijn yells at me to come in when I knock, so I do. He’s grown out his beard since I last saw him in December. He shakes my hand, and asks me to sit down.
I hope that my hand isn’t sweaty. I smile and try to look like I’m a reasonably intelligent human being.
“What can I do for you?”
I took Anj’s name in vain in my introductory email. Reminded him that we met before. I was utterly shameless. And now I’m scared.
“You’re on—” I cough, because my throat is suddenly dry. “You’re on the admissions committee for the graduate program in Management and Engineering Science.”
“Yes.” He looks away.
“How flexible is the program on their admission deadlines?”
He frowns and glances at his laptop. I suspect he’s checking his email.
“Um. Well. It would depend. We don’t like making exceptions, but…” He frowns at his screen, types something in response, then drags his gaze back to me. “It’s not the kind of thing I would do as a favor to a friend. Anj should know better.” This comes out more firmly. “Exceptions would require exceptional circumstances. And an exceptional applicant.”
I don’t let myself choke. Not when I’m about to articulate something I’ve barely let myself think.
“I want to do worldwide risk assessment for companies attempting to adapt to changing circumstances.” My dream, the thing I really want, feels massive spoken out loud. “Before anyone really lets me do that, I’m going to need a credential of some kind.”
He doesn’t notice. He’s openly reading his messages. I can tell that his mind has drifted off to other spheres. “I’d be happy to advise you on your application next year.”
