Graduation Day
Everyone turn around and look at the flunkie.... (TW: drug use, institutionalization, suicidal ideations)
Red cars, blue cars, old cars, new cars. I hear Dr. Seuss in my head watching the bumper-to-bumper cars on my street idling between STOP signs at each corner, inching their way closer to this evening’s graduation ceremony at the high school across the street. Excited as the families are—mylar orbs flying high, suspended by ribbons coiled around fingers, bushels of store-bought flowers wrapped in cellophane and carried like torches—it’s nowhere near the excitement of the students ready to be free of their American high school. The American school system in general, really.
I would know. I graduated three children from the same high school, the institution that once expelled me (drug possession). For a combined twelve years, my kids woke up, rushed out the door, waited in another line of cars each morning and afternoon, hopefully learning things they’d use to make the world a better place.
My oldest had his graduation ceremony off campus at a local university. My middle child had a covid graduation, which is to say families of graduating seniors sequestered their kids in cars and drove them around and through campus as their teachers held up colorful “Congratulations, Graduate!” signs. My youngest child’s graduation ceremony took place on the high school’s football field, just like mine. The ceremony which I had been barred from participating in, but attended anyway.
It was not easy to go back. The blurry specter of my (would be) graduation day appeared to me as it fused with my daughter’s loud, festive commencement. She wore western boots under her graduation gown and a Cartman-themed cap. I felt something more than pride, and it wasn’t vicarious. The more my kids didn’t emulate me, the better.
And like all survivors of something, I saw my former self in the mix. Lest I be mistaken as self-absorbed during my daughter’s moment, I kept the vision to myself. The day really was all about her. But the more I ignored my younger self, the louder she became. Out of courtesy, my younger self waited until bedtime to pose the same question she always asks: WHAT IF?
What if I hadn’t lied, what if I hadn’t gotten busted, what if I hadn’t gone to rehab and been released the day before the Class of 1988 had their rite of passage in seemingly idyllic suburbia…..what if it didn’t still hurt sting so god damn bad.
Instead of joining my peers that fateful day, with whom I’d attended school since moving to the neighborhood in third grade, I sat in the stands with the proud families. It was a day of ugly truths. No longer on a white powder diet, I’d gained twenty pounds in rehab. I wore the only outfit I could find in the closet my parents had ransacked for clues when I ran away from home; a black romper from Victoria’s Secret and a brown leather belt around my hips, black, patent leather heels, and a scowl of envy I inherited from the women in my family. I walked to the school, accepted a program from the high school juniors handing them out (I scanned the long list of graduates for my name, it was still there), and looked for a seat far from anyone I knew.
When my name was read, there was a pause in sequence because I didn’t walk up the steps, cross the stage, take my diploma, and shake the principal’s hand. I felt the onset of a new and different type of shame, and it penetrated my bones like acid. Embarrassment bloomed in my body like a fast-moving virus, turning my face and neck cardinal red. I was certain everyone in the audience turned around and stared at me—Why aren’t you up there with your friends? Oh that’s right. You don’t have any. They’ve forgotten you. I waited for the graduates seated below to turn their necks, find me in the crowd, point to and laugh at me—We always knew you’d amount to nothing. Too bad about the prom! It went on without you, like everything else.
I pulled a pair of cheap sunglasses from my pocket and slipped them on, uncontrollably loosing the tears I’d frozen out for years. If I’d had a gun in my pocket instead of sunglasses, I can’t say I wouldn’t have used that, too. But the girl in me who wanted one little thing to be proud of walked down to the field post-ceremony and wound her way through kids she’d known almost all her life as they embraced one another and smiled for cameras. Looking past her/me, persona non grata.
And I congratulated some of them. Their parents looked at me like I was diseased. Like my addiction and reputation were contagions. Like I was an imminent threat to their son/daughter on the precipice of a promising future. But I took those hits standing up. My heels sinking into the grass, I pulled my shoulders back and meant it when I said, I am so happy for you. (Lump forms in throat). I am so happy for you. (Voice cracks). I am so happy for you. (I can taste my own tears). I am so happy for you. (Blistered feet bleeding as I run back to a house that doesn’t feel like home).
That June Gloom day, some thirty-five years prior to my daughter’s graduation, I returned from the ceremony, crawled back in bed, welcomed depression sleep, then woke up around midnight and ran away again. I woke up the next day somewhere I felt much more comfortable—a stranger’s drug den.
I did not believe I would ever find my way out of that life. Because of a childhood beyond my control, I was vastly different from kids my age. That difference created an espionage-level secret-keeping ability. No one knew what was holding me back, so I was held to society’s standards. And because I never shared, I absorbed the shame of missing the mark year after year. I did not grow up. I grew dark.
“Mom. They’re about to call her name,” my son says. Oh hey, 2023. Sorry, I was just back in 1988 for a minute. (I am, I am, I am). There was a time when I could not conceive of what I am seeing right now.
Graduation Day is a trigger that I can at least plan ahead for. I’m told that it’s not self-indulgent to grieve the person I could have been, the life I could have had. I allow myself WHAT IF? moments, I just don’t stay there.
I cognitively rejoin the hundreds of people seated on rows of hard cement, applauding names and achievements, looking through lens of experience. Grateful. I hold balloons, flowers, context, and pride. No shame. But some residual sadness.
Sadness becomes reflection, memory becomes a black and white film, and words that seek release come together in fleeting murmurations. As soon as the flashback arrives, it’s gone.
And I am left with a story I am finally ready to share.
Oh, man. It made me sad to read this - although I’m delighted this is you, now. Sending love.