“She needs to take it easy for once,” Nani says, as if reading Simran’s mind. “Not that I can tell her that. She takes anything I say so personally.”
“Same here.”
Mom often says Simran should have been Nani’s daughter. Nani was struggling with major depressive disorder when Simran was born. She couldn’t sleep at night, so Nani would wrap her in a hand-embroidered Indian blanket and walk through their house for hours. There’s a picture of two-month-old Simran screaming while Nani clutches her, a proud smile stretched across her face.
“I know how overwhelming it is to have your husband’s family around all the time. When you have to constantly be diplomatic, put on a polite face, it changes you over time,” Nani says. “How could it not? Why else are the women in India, the ones in joint family households, so exhausted? You’ll see, when you and Kunal are married, even though you don’t have to deal with the same things we did, things will be different. You’ll feel different.”
“It seems like that’s just what marriage does,” Simran whispers, wondering if there’s a part of yourself you simply have to give up before joining someone else.
When Simran was younger, she and her female cousins would fast for one week a year in the hopes of finding a good husband. The idea never made sense to her, the idea that a woman had to sustain on less in the present to gain more in the future.
“I should get going,” Nani says. “And remember, don’t worry about anything. I’m fine. And everything’s going to work out.”
“Right. I know that,” Simran say, unsure which one of them she’s trying to convince.
* * *
— —
Cognitive dissonance: the discomfort and mental stress experienced by someone who has contradictory beliefs at the same time. Simran’s professor writes the words on the whiteboard in bulbous, cursive letters that seem to dance.
“Individuals want their expectations to align with their reality,” Doctor Griffin explains. “In the right position, anyone can justify his or her behavior. This is nothing more than a defense mechanism to preserve one’s identity.”
After class, Simran sits in the lab and soaks in the sound of fingers diligently hitting keys. Undistracted, focused fingers. She’s surrounded by people who are compassionate, insightful, and willing to do whatever it takes to become therapists. She wishes she could be like them. Instead, she thinks about the dumbest things. Her mind wanders like it’s a self-made Wikipedia maze.
She pushes her chair back and walks down the hallway, arriving ten minutes early for her meeting with Dr. Bond.
She takes a deep breath. Despite the multiple times she’s rehearsed the words in her bathroom mirror, she needs to muster up this final push of courage. Spit it out, Simran. Just spit it out.
“Do you know why I wanted to meet?” she asks Dr. Bond after she’s sat down and declined a cup of Earl Grey.
He nods. “So you can tell me why you missed the deadline for, well, everything and see what we can do about it. I have no idea whether you’ve even prepared an application for a job or PhD.”
When Simran doesn’t answer, he says, “What exactly is the problem, Simran? It’s as though I just can’t get through to you. You know a master’s in psychology isn’t enough these days to get a good job, yet, you still do nothing about your situation. You’re about to start the summer semester. Your last one. And if you’re still planning to graduate at the beginning of the fall, these things should already be figured out.”
She clears her throat and steadies her hands. This conversation has to happen. Now. “I know. I’ve tried to do what it takes, I really have, but there’s a disconnect. And it’s been there for longer than I’ve wanted to admit. That’s why I had to meet with you.”
She can’t pinpoint any particular emotion on his face. He doesn’t appear angry or surprised or even irritated.
She wishes he’d just yell at her. She glances at a picture of him with his kids at the Jersey Shore, with red buckets and a sandcastle in the background. Maybe this is how he disciplines them, by allowing them to wallow in their own disappointment. A direct contrast to how Indian parents freely express their dismay.
“I want to tell you a story,” Dr. Bond says. “There was a student here six or seven years ago. Smart. Charismatic. The kind people opened up to and leaned on. A lot like you. She had so much potential. But for some reason, she kept doubting herself. That led to her not completing her assignments on time or speaking up in class. She just never gave it her all. And of course, then some faculty members told her she wasn’t cut out for this. They spoke about her to others, discussed the way she was perpetually at the bottom. Hopeless. Not good enough.”
“The way they’ve said that about me?” Simran asks, picturing everyone talking about her in the stuffy faculty lounge that always smells like bread.
Dr. Bond doesn’t answer her question, which is an answer on its own. “After some time, it became clear that her heart just wasn’t in it.”
She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. She never thought she would become that type of student. That type of person. She pictures herself drifting from the present to the future like a dandelion seed.
Dr. Bond continues. “It wasn’t because she couldn’t, which is what everyone else and she thought, but rather, because she wouldn’t. I realized that she had come straight from college, just like you. Had never seen anything outside the classroom.”
She has no idea how she’d be outside a school building. This place has been her home for the last year and a half. She’s stepped in and out of these doors for various reasons, and she knows everything there is to know: which water fountain has the strongest blast, what time the coffee stand on the first floor runs out of cream, when the lounge is empty and peaceful.
“What happened to her?” Simran asks.
“She took a leave of absence—after a lot of paperwork—worked in the outside world for a little bit, and came back refreshed. Now she’s one of the top child therapists in Manhattan.”
He nods at her. Simran nods her head back to mirror his gesture, so he thinks she agrees with what he’s saying.
“Just like that?” she asks, picturing this girl and the plot points in her happily-ever-after career story.
Dr. Bond shrugs. “She needed to get away to realize what she was missing. And perhaps it would do you well to engage in some, what do you call it? soul-searching.”
Soul-searching. The phrase conjures up images of vast beaches, solitary bus rides through western Europe, or days filled with luxury carbohydrates and literature, like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love. What Simran really needs is a vacation from her life.