Graduation Is a Lie

I am jealous that everyone is having so much fun! I am envious actually. Deep down I have deep seated hatred and aversion towards these overwhelming amount of photos on Facebook updates. I glimpse pictures of happy students and friends who have just graduated. They are painted with ageless smiles and dance with festive gait. They're simply adorned with laughter, glee, and evanescent hope for their futures. Their brightly glowing gowns and hot mortarboards camouflaged their bodies. Girls' legs were the only hint of flesh peeking out of their secretive gowns, obstructing their innocence which awaits surrender. What else do I hate about these Kodak moments besides the fact that I did not have any Kodak moments in my high SkOoL senior year. Hm what else? I despise the pictures of couples bearing gifts and planting kisses on each other's cheeks. Fresh makeup lie in place and cement the price of happiness on a festive occasion. We celebrate a milestone where pseudo-progress is made and achievements are pressed onto skin and experience. Graduation is a lie.

Now I am a cynical mofo who doesn't cherish the essence of happiness and the power of happiness when given in its natural right to stand alone for an individual person. I am cynical because I tend not to appreciate happiness, unless I am the one who is happy. When I see others who are happy for slightly "wrong reasons" or inadequate reasons aka MY REASONS TO BE HAPPY, I fret and frown and twist my smile into ugly contortions. I am delighted in cruelty and bask in the shelter of Schadenfreude. I am cynical because I don't believe that parents and their children are allowed to have a moment during graduation to be happy.

Graduation is a time of liminality: you're neither in or out. You have just been vacated and your files have been incinerated per se. But your files have not been transferred to your college yet. Your college life has not started. Your high SkOoL life has reached its completion. You're in the middle of nowhere and sitting in uncomfortable makeshift seats that are not fitted for kings. You're dressed in homogenous outfits that are concealing your beauty and guarantees a full-body sauna. What else? There is a walk to maintain conformity and homogeneity all the while the valedictorian and saluditorian are seated up front with easy access to the microphone. All awards are in paper form. Worst of all, your hard-won and deserving diploma will be mailed to you. It will hopefully be printed with soy ink because we are going green. It is also to be printed on 80% recycled paper, making your diploma flammable. So if you light it up, it will go up in flames and toast easily. Enduring four years to receive a piece of paper is a joke in itself. With the green Bill Gates has in his colon, I can purchase a diploma and PHD/Doctorate in advance. I can also play Catch Me If You Can or some Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) bullshit and become a clandestine super person vacillating between fantasy and reality.

I always measure someone else's perceived happiness (judging by Kodak moments and the width of smiles) in relationship to mine when I graduated. When I graduated, it is safe to say that I did not smile, I did not want my pictures taken, I did not care to wave goodbye to my teachers, I was inundated with personal discomfort and isolation. I had become a brick, a stone cold nonperson who receded from the graduation atmosphere. I had cloistered myself from the very beginning when the line formed and snaked out of the SkOoL building, to the end when I pulled off my sweat-filled gown. I had played invisible---this proved my very point of liminal space. I was in a liminal space where I didn't fit in or belonged. I had no home because I did not belong in my high SkOoL anymore and I did not belong in a college because the semester did not start yet. I was in the middle of nowhere surrounding by a cluster of parents kneeling before their sons and daughters, brushing their hats and waving cameras in front of their faces as if they had won a Nobel Prize or ambled on the cure for cancer.