This is my first blog post as The SubUrban Graduate.
I say SubUrban because I'm determined to avoid rotting in the suburbs of Dallas and actually spend time exploring the city. I'm a city girl at heart, and therefore I'm emphasizing the urban.
We'll see what happens.
I like to write. I like to write it all down as I experience it. Sometimes the product is something scribbled, random, and disorganized.
Maybe this blog will stick.
Oh shit.
Did that really just happen?
What did I just do?
It is quite possible that I have finally been driven to
insanity.
I’m sitting in bed as I write this. I’m shaking a little and
there are cookie crumbs all over my sheets. Shit. I’m chewing my cuticles again
and my fingers look absolutely hideous. Now I’m looking outside the window of
my childhood bedroom onto the street of a standard suburban neighborhood,
complete with trees and shrubs and sidewalks and a little pond with a fountain.
Band posters from high school are still taped to the walls among ticket stubs
and Polaroid photos of myself and people I barely speak to anymore. There are
clothes strewn all over the floor, both the freshly laundered ones and the
haven’t-been-washed-in-basically-forever ones. For the past several weeks, I
have been choosing my outfits by reaching down from my bed and grabbing a
fistful of fabric—if it doesn’t smell, it’s going to be a good day. If it does,
I febreeze myself and hope for the best.
My name is Megha Pulianda. I am twenty-two years old. I
graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in December with my Bachelors
of Arts in Psychology—one semester before many of my peers. I did the things
everyone told me to do. I kept up my grades. I was active in several
organizations on campus. I worked as an undergraduate research assistant in two
laboratories. I took it all in. I made a lot of friends. I fell in love.
And I am currently single, jobless, and living with my
parents in the happy little Dallas suburb, Flower Mound, Texas. I just drank an entire bottle of cabernet completely by
myself. My parents are downstairs watching the Big Bang Theory. My Father is
sorting through the mail that has piled up near the door and my mother is
folding laundry.
Also, I just declined my admission to one of the top ten
Master’s in Counseling Psychology programs in the country.
I’m staring at the words “Your mail was successfully sent”
on the screen and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I’m teetering on the edge
of sanity, about to tumble over.
It is a decision I have pondered over for weeks. I have made
dozens of pros and cons lists on post-it notes, napkins, and envelopes. I
carried this pile with me wherever I went and I looked through them constantly,
hoping for a sign, an answer, a direction, a revelation. Anything.
Finally, I looked at my mother yesterday and whispered, “I
don’t know what to do, mama.” She looked at me with sad and understanding eyes
and said, “hold that thought until we get a couple of margaritas in you.” So
drove to the nearest Mexican restaurant, ready to get to work pen and paper in
hand. I sipped and jotted down bullets beneath each column. There was the
distance of course. Indiana is so far away from everything I am familiar with.
However, that could be a pro as well, right? This could be my chance to start
over with a clean slate. I could be whoever I wanted to be.
After several drinks and scribbles and notes I realized that
I was back where I started. I gazed at the paper with drunken disappointment,
an exact equal number of pros as cons. I had no compelling reason to leave. I
had no compelling reason to stay. My mother gently rubbed my back and soothed
me.
“I think you know what to do. You just need to take the time
to listen to yourself.”
Suddenly I am seventeen. I’m a little heavier (although
nowhere near the freshman twenty-five I would soon experience). There are a few
remnants of teenage acne on my face (but I just started proactiv and my fingers
are crossed! Let’s hope this works!) I’m just as torn, just as confused as the
older version of myself sitting in a tequila bar across from my mother. I’m
cross-legged on my bed and three crisp college acceptance letters are neatly
displayed in front of me. I’m crying, I hadn’t been eating because my stomach
was tied up in knots, and I had been in this pathetic state for days. My father
didn’t know what to say to me anymore. My best friends had their own opinions
of what I should do. I didn’t know whether to take a chance and move to the
east coast, or stay in Texas where everything was bright and familiar.
I decided to come out of my dark cave for what seemed like
the first time in days. I even squinted a little as my eyes adjusted to the light.
As I walked out of my bedroom, I was instantly greeted by the warm, inviting
smells of simmering spices. I could hear them crackle and pop—my mother was
probably making a sabzi curry from odds and ends in the fridge as she often
did. I padded into the kitchen and climbed up onto the counter, sitting with my
legs dangling as I did when I was a child. My mother gently stirred vegetables
on the stove, adding a little of this and a little of that. I wept to her,
revealing my utter distress and confusion over where to spend the next four
years of my life.
“I think you know exactly where you want to go. Don’t be
afraid, darling.” She said.
And she was right. I knew that I wasn’t ready to move so far
away. I loved Austin when I visited the UT campus—everything from its vibrant
music scene to its quirky locals. I loved having friends from high school who
were already there. I wanted to be somewhere where I could make profound
discoveries about myself and become independent, but I still wanted be close
enough to home for those days when the world seemed to be falling apart and I
just needed to get in my car and drive to my parents. I already knew the
answer. My decision was already made. I just needed to listen to myself.
When I came home from the restaurant, I knew a decision
needed to be made quickly. Summer was flying by and I had already accepted the
offer and applied for financial aid. I even found a cute apartment online where
three stoner boys and their pet turtle lived. My mother went to bed and I wandered
into the kitchen. I was craving something sweet, so I picked a recipe for
something simple, something I knew by heart.
There is something wonderfully comforting about baking. I
learned my love for food from my mother. Everyone says that their mom makes the
best food, but my mom is complimented for her cuisine wherever she goes. She
cooks with her soul. Her recipes come from her heart and her imagination. The
bright, bold flavors and vivid colors of her dishes reflect her personality.
However, my love for baking must have come from somewhere else entirely because
my mother, with all her talents in the kitchen, does not enjoy baking at all.
She finds it rigid and restricting. But, I think my love for baking comes from
a desire for order and predictability. If you follow a recipe just so, your
scones will be perfectly browned and soft. If you do the steps just right, your
cake will be moist and delicious. It is one of the only instances in life where
your hard work and knowledge will reliably pay off. The universe will rarely
throw you a curveball when it comes to baking. If you do everything by the
book, you will rarely be disappointed.
I felt frantic and desperate as I walked around the kitchen
to gather all the essentials for basic chocolate chip cookies. I sobbed as I
stirred the dry mixture into the wet. What was I mourning? All of the plans
that failed miserably? My utter lack of choices? How sad I felt now compared to
the high and excitement I felt after graduation?
As the cookies oozed and browned in the oven, I once again
found myself climbing up onto the counter top. I took a deep breath and closed
my eyes. I felt a little ridiculous, but I was going to do it anyways.
“Megha,” I asked myself out loud, “You cannot keep putting
this off. Your potential roommates need your apartment lease signed by Monday.
You have to accept your financial aid package by Wednesday. Do you even want to
go to graduate school at Indiana University?”
I paused for a moment. I breathed in the comforting aroma of
cookies.
“No.” I whispered quietly, shaking my head. “I don’t want to
go. I can’t go.”
Those cookies were the only food that I ate for the next 24
hours. I smoked almost an entire pack of cigarettes, something I had not done
since probably the eleventh grade. And the following night, I drank for a
little courage (and ended up requiring a whole lot of courage) and respectfully
declined my admission to graduate school via an email to the program
coordinator. I held my breath as I hit send.
I am not okay right now. But I just made a big decision.
Perhaps it was a lousy decision. Perhaps it was the best decision I have ever
made. My peers are preparing for law school, new jobs in exciting cities, and
PhD programs. And I moved home. I went through a devastating break-up. And now
I declined admission to the only school that I was accepted to. I have no
skills. I am not particularly talented. The only thing that I can do well is eat.
