Graduation, redux

I had a dream last night about graduation - a dream in which, just like at my real graduation, I left every event early, and completely failed at packing up my stuff, and didn’t get the photos everybody else got, and generally kept missing out on things. But in my dream I wasn’t sick - I just kept being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When I wanted to pack up my stuff, I went to the wrong room - when I finally found the right place, my parents had done it all. When I decided I wanted to get my photos taken  just like everyone else (in my dream, a process that involved a manic photographer and some really bizarre poses in front of a shifting background), I lost my place in line. I kept getting lost and confused about what time it was. I don’t remember actually graduating.

And this made me very upset. It was one of those dreams where I woke up all sad and agitated and angry, not even sure of why until my dream started coming back to me. And what’s interesting about that is that, while I was actually graduating, and feeling like shit, and missing festivities, and not saying proper goodbyes, I didn’t feel very upset at all. I sighed and said it was a pity I was sick, but mostly I just felt apathetic. Endless gratitude towards my parents and Alex, without whom I would have been an unpacked, overwhelmed, incredibly lonely mess. Annoyance with my body. And that was it. No fountain of tears, no ecstatic moment of glory, no gutwrenching ache of goodbye. Just… ‘well, that’s over, I want to sleep now.”

But now that I’ve revisited that weekend in my dreams, I think I’ve gotten the chance to work through some of my mixed-up emotions about leaving a place I’d lived and breathed and cursed and loved and beat myself senseless against for four years. And leaving all the people who’d been right there with me, doing more or less the same thing, without really being there with them for that crucial moment.  It makes me sad and agitated and angry.

Of course, maybe dream-me just really, really wanted a portrait in front of a psychedelic green background. Anything is possible.