
Here’s a life lesson I just learned a little late: Sometimes all your planning and achieving and compromising doesn’t matter at all. Sometimes it makes no difference.
I moved to Boston five days ago so my fiancĆ© could start his new post-doctoral position in a stem-cell lab at Harvard. Heās a neuroscientist, with the grand goal of using stem cells to create human neurons in a petri dish in order to cure psychiatric disease.
This move was huge for us, not just because itās an important step for his career, and now suddenly my father gets to say his future son in law works at Harvard (every Jewish fatherās dream), but mainly because I really, really didnāt want to go.
We were living in San Francisco, my career as an on-camera news host was beginning to take off, and it seemed to me that moving to Boston for my man was going to stall my future in its tracks, make my dead feminist heroes roll over in their graves, and be unimaginably cold and dreary.
We fought for a year and half.
āDo you love me enough to support my life path?ā he would ask me.
āDo you love me enough to support mine?ā Iād respond.
It was a game of chicken, steeped in gender politics and childhood dreams and resentment.
Weād been together ten years already and suddenly the future of our lives seemed forked. Someone was going to have to give in. And because he is curing fucking brain diseases and Iām a writer who can basically work from anywhere, I lost. āYouāll find something there,ā he said. I didnāt want to just find something, to just make it work, I wanted to do something great! But I also value our partnership and his dreams and our love, so I agreed to come to Boston — to at least give it a shot.
In my mind, Boston had become a hellhole, full of sleet and wind and frat boys spilling beer, devoid of opportunity for writers or actors or news hosts.Ā You can imagine what the road trip here was like, with me grinding my teeth through the southwest, feeling that Iād given in on my principles, that I would no longer be the star of my own life, thatās Iād lost control of my narrative, that this was now about him and his dreams.
But if you know anything about Boston, you already know the next part. Itās great here. Culture and opportunity abounds for me. Iām shocked!
Iām not too delusional to admit it: I was wrong. Boston was a stand-in for my fear that I will never follow through with my dreams, that Iāll let the naĆÆve and ambitious little girl I once was down. That Iāll settle.
He can see in my eyes that I love it here. And so far, heās refrained from saying āI told you so,ā because he is so goddamned relieved that I came with him, that I didnāt blow up our life out of fear, that weāre still in this together. We signed a lease. We found the Car Talk garage to fix our Honda. Life here is pretty grand.
Until NIH funding for science got cut by the sequester.
The whole time we were planning this move, the one thing we took for granted was Harvard has money for research. The government values cutting-edge research. He has done everything right along every step the path toward becoming a scientist — studied for years, gotten his pHD at the one of the best neuroscience programs in America, published multiple papers in big journals. Heās got a vision for the future of his investigation — and itās tenable! And exciting!
But it requires millions of dollars. And on March 1, when the GOP failed to agree to minor tax hikes for the rich and allowed a series of senseless cuts to go into effect, that money was put in jeopardy.
Maybe itāll be saved. Maybe the sequester will be overturned. Maybe NIH will get funding again, at least back to the level of the Clinton White House.
But maybe not. And maybe all my hemming and hawing that the love of my life was asking me to loosen my control on my future will pale in comparison to the government, in one thoughtless and avoidable swoop, taking away all his agency.
Donāt worry, my friends say, itās out of your control.
Donāt worry my love, I tell him itās out of your control.
But I am worried. And Iām looking for someone to blame.
My only idea is to run for office on a āpro-science, anti-GOP, pro-tax, anti-bullshitā platform. Maybe Iāll Kickstarter my campaign. Since Obama admitted he did a few drugs once and he still got elected, I think my vetting will go OK. But where do I begin?