Sleep was almost like a near death experience in that the memories from school were flashing through my mind piece by piece. During my freshman year my friends and I would try to see who could get the cutest guy’s letterman jacket to wear at the big game on Friday night. In my sophomore year I would try to collect as many watches from my friends as possible so that I could wear them all at once, sometimes ten on an arm. The images began to rush in like an overflowing dam. I relived serving seven straight points against our rival school in a volleyball match, spending hours with the other student officers planning and decorating for the school dances, totaling my teachers car while on a pizza run during a debate tournament, hanging out with gang at Denny’s after any kind of school event, getting stopped in the hall and being asked for my autograph after the school musical opened, my first performance with the marching band, the band and choir trips to California, earning a state finalist position for a speech and drama scholarship, and being appointed the only student delegate from our school to the Governor’s youth council. They all kept coming; it was like reliving all four years in a minute.
Against my will, nervousness created by my usual commitment to attend to my obligations caused me to wake up. For me, a family tradition was to wake and share with my father all my recent dreams. Wandering out of my room hoping to find my family anxiously getting ready to go with me to the evening’s festivities, I was astonished to find that I was alone. Assuming that they must have been caught up with last minute duties at work, I decided to begin preparing for the night.
I turned on the curling iron, set up the ironing board and threw in a TV dinner. Having no one to bounce my dreams off of I started recounting and analyzing them myself. I had established quite a remarkable resume for myself, and other people always seemed to be impressed. Now, realizing that I was experiencing this day – the culmination of these four years – alone, I wondered why I had worked so hard. Who was I trying to impress, the university admission judges, my peers, my family? Why did I even feel that I had to impress someone, why not just myself? The answer became glaringly obvious to me. I had never done anything because I wanted to. I did everything to get rewards from other people. My reward was gaining the acceptance of my friends, the love of my family, and admission to a university. Ironically now, here I was at the culmination of my activities and it appeared as if I had no friends or family.
I started to see that all of my activities had been my savior from the isolation that I was feeling now. I had the false impression that my presence was necessary, that things could not happen without me being there. I knew that I had to go to school to fulfill my obligations and offices that I held. I had commitments every day before and after school. People depended on me. I never allowed myself to be alone.
What had all my work and success done for me? What had I gotten from it? Here I was on one of the biggest days of my life and I had spent it completely alone. So as I sat curling my hair, I wondered: would anyone really notice if I was gone? I scanned the medicine cabinet for pills I could use to overdose. What would it feel like to die? How would people react when they found out? Would someone finally care? I mindlessly slipped the bottle into my pocket and kept curling my hair. I told myself that at the very least my family would expect me to be at graduation. It was my fighting belief that I had to matter to someone.
I could not wait any longer to leave for the ceremony; no one had called; no one had come home, but I had to leave if I was going to make it on time. I put away the ironing board, unplugged the curling iron, put on my graduation robe and left. I drove the ten miles to the university, swerving mindlessly through the traffic. I held the wheel loosely. What did I care if I crashed? It’s not like the world would stop without me. They wouldn’t even delay the ceremony if I wasn’t there on time. What did it matter?
The sky outside was a fitting, gloomy-gray.
“Maybe, my family will meet me at the auditorium.” I needed to collect myself before going into the preparation area. I had to go present my problem-free persona. God forbid that anyone finds out that the perfect student had a less than perfect day. Apprehensively I drug myself down the hill to the ominous building of doom.
Out of the swarming mass of two hundred blue and red robes, there was not one familiar face in sight. Like a robot I reported to my assigned place in line. Everyone around me was worried about how their cap looked or how it was going to stay on their head. Time were passing as if it were a snail trying to cross a two hundred foot expanse. When the music started we began our procession into the auditorium. The students in front of me were waving to their friends and family. I began my search. My father taught and coached at the school. I had known some of these teachers my whole life. It had been a long-standing tradition that the teachers sat in a row just behind the graduates. It was another tradition that the coaches always sat together, so I knew just where to look. There on the end was the empty seat, where my father should have been. I started to scan what I could see of the crowd, a sea of nameless faces. No one.
I took my seat as the speeches began. I am sure I am not that different from other graduates in that I cannot remember a thing that was said that night, but I am pretty sure that everyone around me were all having a much better time. Occasionally the crowd would burst into laughter at a comment made by the speaker. I used that commotion to turn around to check to see if my father had taken his seat. Every time, no. I began to get nervous. I could feel the wetness of my palms starting to imprint on the fabric of my gown. It was time to prepare for our walk across the stage. We stood up and began to walk. As we reached the edge of the auditorium I took one last glance to his empty seat. I had just enough time to stop a stranger on the edge to give him my camera and tell him my name so I could capture this momentous occurrence on film. We walked down the hall and under the stage to the other side. At the last stop before heading out on stage there was a teacher I was not familiar with waiting to greet us to make sure we timed our entrances perfectly. I felt embarrassed to ask, but I had to know, “can you see my father out in the audience?” I did not have to tell her whom I meant, even though I didn’t know her, all the teachers knew who I was. She searched through the audience, and came up with the same inevitable answer, “No darling, I don’t see him.” I could tell by the tone of her voice that she knew she was delivering my death sentence.
I walked on stage, passed the drama teacher who had been the most influential teacher in my life the last four years. We’d even traveled to New York and Washington D.C. together. I stood on the huge ‘X’ marked on the floor and trembling, stared blindly into the audience. His familiar voice rang out, “Jennifer Elizabeth Kunz. National Honor Society. State Finalist for Sterling Scholar Speech and Drama.” I heard a man cough in the balcony. It was as if my bubble was sound proof too. No one clapped, no one yelled. I was the only one in the school to have that many titles associated with my name in the entire procession, and not even a stranger wanted to recognize me for my efforts with a single clap. I felt like I must have done something wrong and this was the way I was being punished, like there was a conspiracy that someone had told everyone in advance not to clap. It seemed like I was walking my last mile as I turned and walked across the stage to shake hands with all the dignitaries.
Unconsciously we exchanged courtesies. The only thing I was aware of that moment was trying very hard to hold up the appearances that all was well, trying not to cry. I went down the stairs and tried to find the man to whom I had given my camera. I couldn’t remember which one he was and now there were swarms of fathers trying to capture the moment. Finally I found him and retrieved my camera, but of course, he had been so caught up in trying to deal with his own kid he had forgotten. I trudged to my seat and sat face forward staring intentionally at nothing but the lights on the ceiling.
As if his purpose was to bury the already dying, my boyfriend drove the final spike into my heart. Alphabetically his time to cross the stage was after mine. Rather than proceeding on stage in alphabetical order like we were supposed to, he moved his spot in the line so he could go out on stage with another girl. A girl he knew I had a difficult time with him being friends with because they had previously dated and he had once said he imagined they would be sitting on the porch in their wheelchairs talking about their grand kids together someday. When they walked on stage together, the band in the pit went nuts screaming for him. How many times had he abandoned them at a rally or a competition and they had to come to me to bail them out? How many times had they all sat around and told me what a jerk he was? Truly, in the last year, he had treated a lot of people really poorly – even me. Yet now they were screaming their heads off for him as if he were their Savior. Sure I had only actually been a member of the band for a year and he had been there all four years, but I was the one the band voted as most inspirational and best senior. Was it really me they hated? Are they all just two-faced chameleons?
Who cares what the truth really is? The truth was spoken with their actions. The damage had been done. It wasn’t enough to be abandoned by my family. I had to be abandoned by my so called friends too.
After the final Z person crossed the stage, the moment I had excruciatingly waited an eternity for came when all the graduates threw their caps in the air. I would finally be released from this prison in the outer darkness so I could go out and find my father. I would go out in the hall and find him and realize this whole night had only been an imagined nightmare. I would learn that since he had come in late, he had just sat in a different seat, so he didn’t have to disturb the crowd to sit down.
It was the coaches job to collect the fake diplomas they handed us on stage and to trade us for the real ones. So the minute those caps went flying into the air, I went flying out of the auditorium around to the side of the building where the coaches were waiting. My father wasn’t there. Maybe he had gone to the bathroom or was still fighting the crowds to get out, after all, I was the first one to arrive. “Have you seen my father at all tonight? Did he mention anything to you?”
In the most solemn tone I had ever heard, the words resonated out of their mouths, “No, Jennifer.” God, how I have always hated my name.
I turned and walked sullenly back to the lobby of the auditorium. I climbed half way up the stair case leading to the balcony. I sat, alone, on the stairs and watched the sea of mingling people. No one greeted me, no one waved to me, no one hugged me, no one said congratulations, no one took my picture. People were yelling across the room at their friends, crying people were huddles in groups, cameras were flashing, flowers getting squashed as people hugged, balloons popped, corks of imitation wine bottles were flying and there I sat a lone spectator, not a participant. I sat alone in that spot for nearly fifteen minutes. With each pop and flash, my heart constricted, feeling as if I’d been shot at point blank range.
The tears I had worked so hard to hold back all night began to roll down my face. I could not be seen this way, so I gathered my belongings and went outside. I searched for the next open building I could find on campus. Inside, I found the first dark corner I came to and fell apart. The damn broke. I was crying so hard I was convulsing and gasping for breath. If anyone had come across me, they probably would have called 911 thinking I was having a seizure.
Graduation is a symbolic rite of passage. For me it was the symbolism of how alone I had been my whole life. How pathetically I seemed to need other people in my life and how those people always hurt me. How foolish was I to believe that I mattered or that anyone really cared?
I don’t know how long I was there, but I could see the lights on campus beginning to turn off, one by one. Not surprisingly, no one knew I was still there, so I decided to pull myself together enough that I could walk to me car.
Lucky for me it had begun to rain, so if I did run into anyone they would not have been able to tell I had been crying. I could have blamed all the dampness and trails of mascara on the rain. Normally, I hated to walk in the rain, but tonight I stalled. I walked as slow as could to soak up the dampness that so accurately depicted my mood. The rain was there just for me. It’s chill wrapped me in warmth and consoled me. It’s as if the earth understood my misery. It was dark, cloudy and cold. I bet I was the only person that night who appreciated the rain. It was literally raining on everyone else’s party; not mine.
I made my way back past the auditorium. There were a few straggling people, but it was essentially empty. Still no one said a word to me. I just continued on to my car. The night was over and no one had cared. What difference would it have made if I went for the pills now? I would never see any of these people again for the rest of my life, but I still had to go home and face my parents. Trembling I started the engine. My mother had given me this car. Now I wished this very hunk of metal would take my life away. I moved down the road, water swishing onto the window by the cars rushing passed me, annoyed by my pace. I was enjoying the predictable and gentle rhythm of the wipers. They seemed to wash my life away for me right in front of my eyes.
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