Sneakily squeaky thoughts
It was a sleepy hot, a hot that made me want to stagger and fall down and go to sleep. Humid too, and I couldn't walk in a straight line as we marched. Gymnasium to athletic fields, with the oily black stench of the running track in between.
It was a sort of heat that made me something just short of dizzy, heat that made everyone sweat. I could smell people sweating even if they were miles away, and everyone had a distinctive smell. Mingled with perfume and shampoo, laundry detergent or just the scent they were born with, was sweat. Even the people I didn't know that well, and I would be graduating without ever knowing well, had scents that were specialized and familiar.
I wandered the rest of the afternoon in the same sort of daze. I talked to Becca for a while, and she sounded exhausted and weary, and never broke into a tone of excitement. Sometimes she talks to me, sounds tired, but remembers a story she meant to tell me, and her whole body will jolt to attention. This didn't happen. We just talked; both of us in monotone.
We left the graduation rehearsal. I wandered down the halls with them, in my own personal fog. They were talking about going clubbing. I scuffed my feet on the mottled grey carpet. I've never gone clubbing, but I suspect it isn't really my thing. We reached the end of the hall. I said softly "See ya later," and they said "Bye, marge," in the same tired tone. I shuffled out of the building. Down the hallways that rank of humidity, and lemon cleaner. Past the chlorine of the pool, and the gleaming and shimmering athletic hallway which made me dizzy with reflections of fluorescent lights. Out the hand-smeared doors.
There had been something very nice about two of my last exams. There was a spirit of intellectual connection and excitement in my Latin exam. I'm not sure if anyone found it exciting, or if I was the only one, but it hardly mattered. I got a thrill out of it. One of the boys spoke with such geniality about the Book of Acts that the entire class was in hysterics, another girl had fascinating insights into the Book of Daniel, Tim spoke with a spark about Aqueducts. And I picked up on connections. Topics that were separated by several centuries held special relevance to each other, and I loved seeing that. It was a thrill, and I felt sad to leave the class.
My English exam was left me with less of an intellectual spark but with a greater personal one. We read aloud one or two memoirs, and talked about the special things we brought in for the class. People had trinkets and mementos, their mother's wedding sari, their flutes and dance shoes. I had a mess of photographs, Mr. Bluebird, and The Winter of Our Discontent. I did not like presenting, but I loved listening to everyone else. When it was my turn, my mouth became full of chalk and sawdust, and I started whirring and spinning inside with nervousness.
Listening to everyone else, however, was beautiful. So many kids I hardly knew saying things that made me instantly like them, so many kids in a different light that made me instantly question what I had thought of them since sixth grade, so many kids whooping when the flag of Gordania (Amanda Gordon's dictatorship in the making) was unfurled.
Many kids had wonderful suggestions for coping with change: peanut butter ice cream, stereo sets turned up loud, driving on late summer nights, and returning to the friends that you can trust. I left English feeling more buzzy with goodwill than I had felt in ages. It's been a rough year for a lot of people, and sentiments that would be superficial and pointless on greeting cards held a lot of weight spoken by those who bore the memory of suffering.
I will miss this. The evidence of intellectual fervor, the evidence of personal growth are things that school surprised me with a few times. I'll miss that. At the same time, there's the knowledge that I've spent a unhealthy amount of my time in high school rotting away in apathy and boredom under the merciless thumb of miserably unpleasant teachers. I rattled off the list of books I had been reading to my therapist the other day, straight after telling her how little I had been doing for Physics.
"Sounds like you've been educating yourself at the expense of your physics grade," she said. And I sat back, thought about what she said, and said "Yeah. I guess so." What she said left me with a little hope: that the excitement and thrill I got out of school, in English and Latin, could be replicated. That I'm capable enough and willing enough to educate myself by reading. That was a nice thought.
I am not particularly thrilled about graduating.
I've spent most of the week trying to figure out exactly what I feel about graduating. It's not sadness, which I thought it was for a while. I haven't been even waxing terribly nostalgic. Sometimes I get hit with a pang of sadness that I haven't gotten to know some people better, but that fades, and I move on. I know that missing out on people is my own fault, so I don't harp on the loss.
I think it's this: Graduation doesn't feel like an accomplishment. It just doesn't. Graduations from high school aren't even a big deal in my family, and I just feel somewhat empty about it. Not sad, not joyous. It feels like a non-event. I don't even feel like the actual completion of high school was a particularly difficult task. Decent grades were difficult. But getting 21 credits? Not flunking my last quarter of English? There are other things that I'm far more proud of, and infinitely more joyous about.
I'm glad and joyous that I survived this year of my life. Surviving high school? That was nothin'. I'm glad parts of it are over with, but I'm not proud, and I'm not whooping and hollering with excitement. College is too far off for me to be excited about it yet, and most of what I feel about it is a vague apprehension.
It's summer now, and a sleepy, hazy, but cool breeze is coming from the west. I can see the late afternoon light on the floorboards and underneath the dirty radiator, and I can hear my father mowing what was waist high grass out near the blueberry bushes. Some of my favorite memories take place leaning back in this chair, with the windows open and with comforting music coming on computer speakers, and inhaling the summer evening fog. This feeling, to be sure, is worth more than the completion my high school years.
2000-06-16, Sneakily sleepy thoughts
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