Chapter 1
one
. . .
Violet
present day
The things I would do right now for an iced chai latte were unspeakable. I was heading into office hours sans caffeine which was unfortunate, both for my own sanity and for my students who were likely hoping for a coherent answer to their often incoherent questions. In an ideal world, their teaching assistant would have their life together. But this world was not ideal (see me spending the previous day fielding SOS texts from the undergrad research assistants I was mentoring, trying (and failing) to understand what was happening in my graduate statistics course, and catching up on grading papers for PSYCH101). In the aforementioned ideal world, I would have had time to finally make some progress on my thesis. Instead, after my hellish day I decided that I deserved a three-hour binge-watch of Selling Sunset and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
I had no misconceptions about what a PhD program would be like when I started a little over three years ago. I knew it would be mentally exhausting, and some nights would be spent eating sleep for dinner (God forbid the university paid us a living wage). But no one had prepared me for the emotional turmoil that was my first year in the Developmental Neuroscience program at Westchester. When I started the program working for the top researcher in my field, who was also my hero at the time, I thought I was living the dream. That was until I got to see the true colors of my former mentor and the monster hidden behind a long list of esteemed awards, and groundbreaking publications. My second year was spent finding my footing in a new lab and slowly healing the wounds left from year one, wounds that I didn’t even know existed until one would get pressed on.
I wasn’t entirely sure how my third year would pan out, but I knew at the very least that I had nowhere to go but up. A rare streak of optimism. I may not remember the last time I got more than six hours of sleep, or when I’d had three full meals in a day, but I could at least put my past far behind me and stop crying over spilled milk (milk that ultimately ruined my laptop as I was coding an MRI task).
A clean slate. That’s what this year would bring for me, Violet Amin — your favorite well-adjusted and somewhat mentally healthy graduate student. Though I still had my moments where the pressure would start to weigh down on me, I tried my best to not let it consume me like it had in the past. I would instead take ten deep breaths — in five seconds, out seven — and remind myself that this was my dream . This was all I ever wanted. Which meant it all would be worth it in the end. It had to be.
I made it halfway down the hall when I felt my forehead tighten — the start of an impending headache. I had entirely too much going on today to be taken down by a headache that was no doubt brought on by a mixture of sleep deprivation and caffeine withdrawals. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea if you were a little late to office hours. The caffeine demon inside you is only going to get crabbier, and you rarely have students show up in the beginning. It was later in the afternoon which meant the Beanery — my favorite campus café that made elite chai lattes — would likely be pretty empty.
For once, luck appeared to be on my side. I waltzed right up to the cashier and secured my delicious beverage in record speed, and it looked like I was going to make it back to my office in the nick of time. That was until I ran straight into a wall in my haste to exit the Beanery. A wall made of flesh and pectoral muscle. Damn, what are they feeding these kids? My eyes trail up to a muscular neck and finally, the stranger’s face. As my eyes settled on his shaken expression, I realize he is not a stranger at all. Nor is he a student. The noise that comes out of my mouth is a horrid mix of a wheeze and a choke. It had been nearly three years since I had last spoken to him.
Three years since I made a vow to myself that I would never, ever, feel that type of pain again – pain that he caused. I’d tried my best to block out our last conversation. I didn’t want his half-assed apologies or reasons as to why I was never good enough for him. Why I was never good enough for anyone. It wasn’t the first time in my life that I realized I had cared a lot more about someone than they had cared about me, but I made a promise to myself that it would be the last. Up until now, I had thought I had moved on and fully forgotten that he had existed. But the twinge in my heart and the fact that I couldn’t even bring myself to think his name told me how much I still had to get over. He didn’t need to know that though. “Excuse me.”
He stood frozen in place. For every bit of calm, cool, and collected I had hoped to appear, his face mirrored my true panic — eyes bulged wide, mouth slightly open, and cheeks flushed a subtle shade of pink. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. I suppose in many ways that’s what I am to him. A ghost of his past, now haunting his present. He blinked a few times before getting out a “W— what?” He looked like he was about to pass out.
I took his moment of confusion to slide past him, bolting straight for the psychology building. I wanted — really needed — nothing more than to just huddle up in the corner of my office for the rest of the day. How could I possibly be expected to work, or even function, after running into him again? Except I had to; that was the promise I made myself. After spending countless days wondering where it all went wrong, I decided the best thing I could do for myself was to let it all go. Turns out I would also lose a part of myself when I let him go.