Well obviously, I didn’t really kill myself. So where in the story did I divert from reality? The answer is, not in too many places.
Recently a friend of mine posted a graduation picture online. It was the first picture I had ever seen taken from that day, and I still can't really tell if it is me I think I see in the picture or not. I don’t remember posing for it. My first thought when I saw the picture was astonishment because I didn’t even remember that our gowns were red. I remembered the boys in blue, but apparently I didn’t remember ours were a different color. The second part that shocked me was all the girls in the picture are the girls I would have considered popular or from the “in” crowd. Although I knew them all, I don’t think any of them would have considered me their friend, so I don’t quite understand what I would have been doing in the picture. The ambiguity seems fitting to the experience, maybe it is me and maybe it isn't. Either was it is an interesting photo.
So, to finish the story in a truthful way, it ends like this:
As I was walking back to the auditorium after hiding in the other building, a sophomore boy with whom I had gone to a dance, caught up with me and gave me a Indian flower vase as a graduation present. It was the sweetest heart felt gesture – and I had felt terribly guilty about accepting it, knowing about how I had given a similar gift to a boy I had a crush on during my sophomore year. However, that gesture was the one thing I held on to to help me stay calm. After he walked away, I searched for the boy my heart belonged to. He was off celebrating with friends and family. He could tell something was definitely wrong. I just told him that I really, really needed him that night and he agreed to come pick me up. So I drove myself home. When I arrived home, I had the conversation in the story and went to my room and waited. About a half an hour later my boyfriend picked me up and we drove up the canyon towards the church camp where one of the graduation parties was being held. Before we arrived though we pulled off to the side of the road and I cried into his arms for a long time. His mother was expecting us, so we couldn’t delay too long, so eventually we made it to the camp. I remember it being pretty empty and I don’t remember doing anything except sleeping. I had to get up by six or seven to make it back to take a final at eight o’clock in the morning. It never crossed my mind to talk to my professors and explain my situation and ask for an extension. Being it was my first quarter in college, I didn’t know you could do that kind of thing.
Oh, and the reasons for my dad being sick don’t play out well in the telling of my story, nor really in my mind either, but my dad did have and excuse. As for most of my memories, we remember it very differently. Apparently, it was the week before graduation that we had both gone in together to get some dentistry work done. I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I don’t remember what he had done, but we did it at the same time. I clearly remember being sick for the first day and laying in my room listening to the soundtrack to “The Princess Bride” that my boyfriend had brought over. I remember trying to eat my dinner and I couldn’t stay awake, so I was told to go back to my room and I passed out on the floor before I made it back to my room. However, I don’t remember missing any school because of it. I don’t remember my dad missing and work because of it or being sick from it at all. I was home alone most of the afternoon on the day I graduated. If he was so sick, why wasn’t he home then? He wasn’t at the doctors. Looking back, what kind of brilliant person schedules dental work the week of graduation anyway? He has an excuse, but from my perspective it just isn’t sufficient.
He taught at the school for decades and my graduation is probably the only one he didn’t attended. In my world, I don’t care how miserable I would be, if I had to wear a Depends diaper and bring a sack to puke in I would still go. I would have to be on my death bed to be kept away from my child’s graduation. Maybe I will see it differently when my kids graduate, but that is how I see it now.
Ironically, I became a theater major and the building in which I graduated would be the same building that I would spend every day of my life in for the next four years and the same stage I would graduate again on four years later. Knowing what I do now, I don’t think I would ever choose early college again – the benefits did not outweigh the disadvantages. Granted I am one of the few people I know who actually graduated from college, with two degrees and a teaching certificate in four years, but I am not so sure rushing through college was a good thing either.
Later when I moved to California and began taking classes on a college campus again and realized I was still one of the youngest on campus, but I had a husband and career, I could see just how much of my youth I had really missed out on. Unlike what I had been taught to believe, life isn’t a race to see who can be the most productive adult first. Life is an experience and the journey should be savored for what it is. Life isn’t a series of expectations that you fulfill for others, it should be about doing what makes life fulfilling for you.
My college graduation was very different from my high school graduation in many ways. The biggest difference was I didn’t really care about actually walking across the stage. I had the paper and that was all that mattered. I had the opportunity to cross the stage in college twice, but I only did it once. Just like my high school graduation, I spent the day mostly alone and drove myself to the ceremony. I remember having to run across campus to get in line because I had actually arrived late and my section of the line was already moving. And just like high school, I didn’t really know anyone else I was graduating with. I hadn’t taken the time to get to know anyone in college any better than I needed to to get an assignment done.
The biggest difference this time around is how much everyone else cared. I was the first child for one family and the first girl to ever graduate from college for the other. Everyone was there: all the parents and grandparents, my ‘siblings’ never really considered me a sibling, so they weren’t there, but everyone else was and there were flowers and small presents and people took me out to dinner. It was a big deal. But to me, they were all four years too late and I didn’t really care. I graciously accepted their gifts and went along for dinner, because I still always try hard to do what is expected of me, but I was a different person now. Four years ago, a part of my trust and innocence died.
High school graduation was a rite of passage that rather than opening up all the wonderful possibilities of the world, killed my conquering spirit. I rarely look at the world as giant, unlimited opportunity like I used to. Today it is just filled with obligations to make ends meet and to make it from one day to the next. It is twenty years later and I still face the same battle in trying to trust that I really am a loved person who matters and makes a difference.
And maybe in the end that is why I became a teacher, so I could help make a difference in the life of someone else. The problem is, I am not sure I always make a good difference. I want to. My heart is the right place, but in the day to day grind of teaching and disciplining, I am not so sure I always do …
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