Zero Week was as much fun as ever, and I joined a couple of groups just for grad students, including a climate change club. Cass was stunned by the activities fair and all the other activities. We went to a concert and a few other of the formal activities. And I met with my faculty committee, who were pleased to see me back and had a lot of guidance for me. I had a new advisor too. Additionally, they had a reception for all the grad students, snacks, punch, and socializing with other new students as well as those who were continuing. And on Thursday, I had my beach party, to which I invited Cass, Zayna, Maya, my brother, Paul, some of my other friends who were still undergrads, the grad students I'd met in my program, and told everybody to bring whoever they wanted.
Cass and I went out early; she wasn't interested in surfing but was happy to watch our stuff and read something frivolous. She brought a cooler for our water and other beverages and snacks, and it wasn't long before other people started to come on by. There was volleyball and tag football and swimming and socializing going on, a few other surfers, including Paul. Who had brought his brother along with some of his fraternity brothers and other friends. Zayna and Maya showed up after lunch, ready to take a little break from their studies and blow off some steam. There was a good crowd when I came in and took a break under my beach umbrella. Everybody seemed to be having a good time. My brother brought his roommate and a few of his dorm mates and settled in nicely. Paul had survived his freshman year with his enthusiasm undaunted and was eager to get into more interesting classes. Cass had invited a few people she'd met in the dentistry program and introduced me; they seemed nice and were also eager to have some fun before buckling down. At around three, I asked Cass when she wanted to go, and about a half hour later we packed up. She asked if John could come back with us, sparing Paul the drive since the grad student apartments were quite a ways from The Hill. I agreed, of course, Paul has a tendency to get cross when he's tired and dropping off his brother would be kind of a pain. And we'd driven for a couple hours together without a single homicidal impulse on my part. Conversation was focused on our classes and what we were expecting/hoping/dreading from our programs. Nice and light.
"I didn't hate it," I admitted to Cass, Maya, and Zayna Saturday morning when we met for coffee.
"He stayed down here for the summer, got a job landscaping, did his therapy," Cass said. "His grandma kind of strongarmed him into studying Buddhism to kind of level him out, provide some balance."
"Mrs Park?" I said, surprised. She wasn't very dictatorial, or so I'd thought.
"No, the Chinese one. Paul said they came over for a visit when John graduated and she sat him down, told him to get his shit together, that he needed to learn how to deal with disappointments better, learn how to see the beauty in simplicity. They took him to a temple here and now he does tai chi on a regular basis and meditates every day. Paul said he didn't think it was going to work, but it helps keep John grounded. The tai chi practice he goes to has mostly elderly people in it and he's learned a lot from them."
"Huh," Zayna said. "He seemed to actually be having fun at the beach. Maybe he's pulled his head out. He used to be a lot of fun." Then we moved on and she told us that her boss at the publishing house she'd interned at that summer wanted her back after she graduated. She'd be a junior editor, learning the ropes, getting all the crap jobs, including slogging through the slush pile to find good manuscripts. The pay was on the crappy side too, but she was really excited, and I didn't allow the sadness I felt to show; she'd be clear across the continent. But closer to Carol, so that was something. Carol was settling in, studying hard, a little adrift; the East Coast was a whole different culture and the California girl felt the culture gap. But she was also having a good time, she'd been into DC a couple times and visited some historic sites in Maryland as well as having her studies in public health and epidemiology to keep her afloat. Keshondra was having a blast in Chicago, exploring the pier and nightlife with her new friends. And studying her beloved economics, of course, but she was an inspiration for me in remembering to stop and smell the roses. Maya was glad to be back although she'd enjoyed Texas, and we were thrilled to have her around after four years of just seeing her in bits during vacations. She'd gotten internships too in the National Parks system. She'd learned a lot from them, one of which was that she didn't want to be a ranger.
"I got a brand-new advisor," I offered. "New to the faculty, opening a whole new area of expertise for us. Now that I'm going to be mostly a land lubber, I had to find something different."
"Yeah, you weren't very specific about your internship," Maya said. "How bad could it have been?"
"I got the opportunity to go out for two weeks on a research vessel, studying what I thought I wanted to study, learning about the ship as well, but a storm came up that was way worse than expected. I was seasick and terrified that we'd die out there." I could still feel it in dreams occasionally.
"Come on." Zayna was skeptical.
'Oh, god, it was awful," I said, shuddering. "Ninety knot winds. The waves were about twenty meters, or about 65 feet, for you savages who haven't accepted the metric system, I was puking my guts out then dry-heaving, the ship was rolling and pitching up and down, the metal was making noise. And the scientists were pretty worried too. I don't have such an attachment to ocean studies that I'm willing to do that ever again. After that, I spent my time looking at different aspects of climate change; it's not like we have to declare a focus right off the bat. But now I'm looking at land-atmosphere interactions, water cycle processes, land surface & hydrological modelling, fire spread and fire-atmosphere interactions, and climate change impacts on fresh water resources. Drought studies, basically, and the consequences of drought. Things that I can study safely on land. Or on lakes and rivers. I can handle those."
"Ok," Maya said after a short silence. "That does sound pretty bad. But studying drought? You're usually not given to extremes." That cracked us all up.
"I was interested in the ocean pretty much because I enjoy surfing so much and wanted to focus on that. But the things that interested me about that area is in the deep sea, and fuck no now. I'm not going back out there. There's nothing you can do in the middle of the ocean if you get in trouble. And there are a lot of other aspects of climate change that are interesting. My new advisor has some other things he wants me to explore before I settle down on one area."
"I'm willing to concede that it must have been horrible if you're so against it now," Zayna said. "You're usually like a dog with a bone once you get your teeth into something." She toyed with her coffee cup. "So, does this mean you could possibly get back together with Will?"
"No." I said after a moment. "He's got somebody new in his life. We talked after graduation. And while we'll always be fond of each other, it really is over. It took him time, but he's found somebody who can tolerate the risks he runs in football. They're compatible, and he wants to get serious about her. The pendant was both congratulations and goodbye."
"That kind of sucks, still," Cass said, and I shrugged.
"Well, it is what it is. And I really am trying to look around, recognize that there's more to life than tearing through school in the shortest amount of time. For my birthday, Grandpa is paying for classes just for fun. Off the UCLA campus. I start a class at the Gourmandise School called Pie Therapy, where the instruction incorporates mindfulness, nixes judgement, and tackles control issues while you make and bake a pie that you take with you. Never tried baking as a form of stress therapy, but even if it doesn't really work, I have something to eat at the end of it. After that I have an Outdoor Urban Skills class, where I learn what's edible that just grows in urban environments and what's not, and how to tell what mushrooms are edible and which will send me to the ER. And we make a dinner out of what we find. Then I'm going to learn how to do macrame. And learn how to harvest sea salt. And that takes me up to finals. Pie Therapy, the foraging class, and the sea salt class are all one-shot deals, the macrame class is four classes. And sure, it reeks of the 70's, but you can make really pretty room dividers and stuff. It'll be some fun new experiences and it gets me off campus and away from my usual routine. My work-study assignment is being a research assistant to the faculty; I'll be checking citation and helping research their papers, so that's different but not really new, you know?"
Cass just looked at me, jaded. "All I want is the occasional date night and time to read something that isn't mouth-related. This isn't quite what I think anybody meant by stopping and smelling the roses." I shrugged again.
"I don't want another relationship, things are over with Will, he's in the rear-view mirror now," I said, still sad about that. But I loved him enough still to hope he found his own happiness. "Honestly, I just want to keep busy. I don't want to hole up in my apartment, becoming some weird hermit who only sees the light as she scuttles from one building to the next. I need action. The two relationships I really tried with didn't work out, and I worry that if I slow down I'm going to dwell. And brood, and that's not productive."
"What's wrong with that?" Maya wanted to know.
"Because I don't need to wallow," I said, snapping just a bit. "I feel completely unlovable in the romantic sense, and I just can't let that drag me down. It's not just about getting laid, it's about finding somebody to share with, who's going to ask about my day, talk about his, discuss problems and successes, laugh, silly stuff as well as serious. I don't think I'm ever going to have that beyond a short-term thing. I'm not an easy person. Have a life together. I just want to mean something important to somebody."
"I don't think that just because Will wanted to play a hazardous sport for a living makes you unlovable," Cass said firmly. "John has issues still that have nothing to do with you."
"I wanted to help and he wouldn't even let me be a support," I said tersely. "I loved him, his problems were also mine. This is what I'm talking about. Finding somebody who will let me love all of him. And who will love all of me. Who makes me a priority in his life, not an encumbrance." My eyes filled.
"Leia," Zayna said after a baffled pause. "You're twenty-two. You have so much time. You're amazing. You're gong to find somebody."
"I know that with your family you're accustomed to being overlooked, feeling uncared for," Maya said gently. "I know that you're trying to fill a hole in your life, but there's no time table on this. You can't... I dunno. This is one thing that you're not going to be able to focus on, get it done, check it off your list of things that you want for your life. You just can't give up. You've got to kiss a lot of frogs."
"Oh, god, I have," I groused, slouching in my chair. That made us all laugh.
"As long as I've known you, you were always looking ahead to college, get your education, let your real life begin," Cass said. "You're always eyes forward, racing to get to the next checkpoint in your race. You might want to consider that maybe your man just doesn't run as fast."
"I don't know anybody who goes at your pace, not really," Zayna said. "You're a one-woman dogsled team. Sweetie, life isn't a series of obstacles to overcome or tokens to collect, pass Go, collect $200. It's not just a matter of widening your focus and doing even more things. It's also about knowing yourself, being content with who you are, what you've got, what you've achieved. For reasons that are quite beyond me, you have an inferiority complex, that's why you're lining up diplomas on your wall, achievements that you can point to like shiny things. You're more than your accomplishments, impressive though they are. You've got to slow down enough for people to get to know you, the real you. And what happens if you burn yourself out? You're working so hard on your professional life, that's not enough. You have to cultivate yourself too, and not with classes, either. You've got to make yourself your priority."
"It's your family," Maya said. "You might have allowed them more room in your life, but I don't think you've actually forgiven your parents for what happened when you were growing up. You have with your brother and grandpa because they apologized and worked to earn your forgiveness. Your parents just think that helping with your tuition takes care of their neglect. It doesn't, but you also probably didn't tell them it doesn't. I don't know if they can really make things better, you've told them in the past what you need and they didn't really pay attention. But a guy isn't going to fill that hole."
"I didn't know I was going to be getting an intervention today," I grumped.
"It was not the plan," Cass said. "But seriously, Leia, you've got to stop driving yourself so hard. I wish one of us was going to be a therapist, because I don't know how to help. I just know that your current pace really isn't sustainable. You burn out, you might flunk out... there goes your plan. I really feel that you just need to... I don't know. Maybe let go of the feeling that there's something wrong with you because your parents were assholes. That you have anything to prove. You don't. You can keep going, getting into honor societies and collecting academic prizes, but that's not going to give you what you want." She sighed. "And that's all I've got to say. Just think about it. Maybe Pie Therapy will really be your thing."
I didn't know if piecrust and filling was really going to be enough.