My final year at Davidson, 2003–2004, was the smoothest one. I enjoyed my academic work and had a supportive group of friends. When I declared myself an English major, I hadn’t understood that the degree wouldn’t include much creative writing, but I did manage to take one writing class before graduating, and was encouraged by my professor, which gave me tentative hope. I’d fallen in love while studying abroad in Australia the previous year and was planning to move back, as charmed by him as I was by that country’s abundant sunshine, its culture of laid-back happiness. But then I lost my courage right before graduation—we broke up, and I threw out the immigration paperwork. I could not commit, could not pull off such a big transition. The happiness that I imagined seemed ludicrous, totally unlikely, so I sabotaged it before I could be disappointed. This left me with no specific passion or profession or love I could follow, no idea where to go.
So the summer after I graduated from college found me stranded at Carol and Carroll’s, broke and panicked about the future. Having dedicated so many years to academic success, I didn’t know what to do with it. For weeks, I slept too late and shuffled aimlessly around the house, occasionally going out to my packed car to extricate something from the floor-to-ceiling mounds of my belongings. I avoided the television when my aunt and uncle were watching marathon sessions of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or Cold Case, shows they seemed to find cathartic and I couldn’t stand. Carol and Carroll tactfully avoided asking me what my plan was, but I knew they were wondering. I looked up rent prices in cities from coast to coast and tried on various futures in my head, but I couldn’t gain any traction.
My friend and classmate Alex, who had moved to Raleigh for graduate school, saved me. After many sad summer nights of online chatting, countless tears shed in the white-blue light of the computer screen, I read his lifeline: “Just put your shit in your car and come back down. We’ll figure it out.”
My car was still packed, so I easily surrendered to Alex, a steadfast, responsible person who would never judge me for not being one myself. A couple of days later I said my goodbyes and got on the road. I stayed on Alex’s couch for weeks, then rented a room in a filthy apartment in Chapel Hill, near the university. My roommates were expelled stoner undergraduates who cooked so much bacon that the kitchen walls were slick with it. The three years separating me from them suddenly felt like a decade. I didn’t have a cell phone or internet connection or landline, and the feeling I remember most clearly from that time is the anticipation of walking through the clinging heat to the huge bank of steel mailboxes outside, hoping someone—who?—had sent me a letter.
Soon I got a job as an administrative assistant at the University of North Carolina, a huge blessing that at the time felt like a failure. I was ashamed to be a secretary while so many of my college classmates were moving on to bigger things, getting their MDs or going to art school or working with high-minded nonprofits in Washington. But then I’d look at my soft hands and think about Mom’s swollen, twisted knuckles, and berate myself for wanting more. You got this great education, and what are you doing with it? What people don’t know is that you’re actually stupid, a vicious, ruthless part of me would hiss. And you can’t even fucking appreciate that you don’t have to do any real work.
Sometimes that voice got worse. Sometimes things got out of hand. The generalized fury I’d felt during college, unleashed on those long vodka nights, I now turned inward, I now felt all the time. I’d come home from work and sit alone in my bedroom, on my mattress on the floor, drinking beer from a warming six-pack I’d keep on the old carpet next to me. I could be out walking around town in the nice weather, I’d think, or I could go to a coffee shop, maybe make a new friend. But the idea of actually going out in public when I didn’t have to was unfathomable, no matter how much Carolina sunshine sifted through my blinds. There was no hectic social life to throw myself into, to use as distraction, so it became hard to leave the house at all.
I’d try to read or to listen to CDs on my laptop, but I had trouble focusing on the books, and the music sounded tinny and emotionless, like it was coming from an open door at the end of a long hallway. I was full of rage at myself. Why wasn’t I doing more, why was I wasting all of Mom’s hard work? Why wasn’t I at least happy? Finally, the frustrated energy within me had to go somewhere. I’d stand up quickly, as though I could run from that voice, and finally I’d pull my hand back and slap my face, hard, over and over. There was no one to keep me in line, no one to motivate me. No one seemed to care what I did, except me. I could be ruthless, and my ruthlessness paralyzed me.
I recognized this inner voice, but I didn’t want to admit it. It was the second self, born into the rain on the night of the murder, the older sister who had helped me move forward under that great weight. She had taken me this far, but now she’d gone rancid within me, bitter and trapped and scornful of my flagging strength.
I fought back against her, though, as my life gradually improved. Courtney, the receptionist in our office, was around my age, and she kept inviting me to spend time with her tightly knit group of friends; eventually I said yes, and my life expanded from there as I met more and more people. I was terribly self-conscious at first, unused to talking to new people, but each time someone smiled upon seeing me again, each time I told a joke and someone laughed, I remembered for a moment that I could be nice to spend time with, that I wasn’t as stupid and dull as I felt.