June 24, 2002 I cannot believe it's my last day as a high school senior. Today there's graduation practice, and tomorrow's rising sun will mark the first day of a life unconstrained by public education, and its myopic field of vision...
7:15 a.m.
No wait, I finished high school a year ago. Even if I had not dropped out, I would technically be a junior. In other words, I'd have spent this whole year banging my head against a locker, hanging out by the post office with the hope I might be lucky enough to come down with anthrax, as by now I would be out of excuses for missing school.
My summer began with the solstice, as my last day of class was on Thursday. My grade has not been e-mailed to me yet, but if she likes me as much as she pretends to, I have nothing to worry about. If Dr. Hawley's magnanimity is fabricated, then it will be a B and I'll get kicked off the President's Honor List and into the sludge-coated lake across the street. I am suddenly eager to check my e-mail.
The social portion of my being took an extended sabbatical beginning with Dairy Queen employment and ending with quitting Follett. Most people get jobs to earn spending money. I worked to thoroughly exhaust myself, prove I am no longer afflicted, and become disenchanted with the universe outside my bedroom. Now my time is all mine with no structure whatsoever. It is the time of year when everyone's parents are urging them to get jobs, because dammit, who wants their kids to have fun all summer? At this juncture in the economic downturn (it had to happen sometime), the young people should be at least partially responsible for scooping us out of it. Then Mom and Dad can sleep soundly knowing their child is not adding to the unemployment rate.
Working made me feel competent and less physically debilitated than my doctor's notes allowed. It also turned me into a robot, whose preprogrammed passivity convinced me I had no right to complicate other people's schedules by working fewer than twenty-one hours a week. I worked all year, dammit. Getting a life has suddenly become more important than getting a better job.
Yesterday I went to Ronn's graduation party. Something happened which rarely ever does at parties: I enjoyed myself. Mere mention of the word "party" is typically enough to get under my skin. I am not the type to mingle or scour through my head for appropriate things to discuss with people's relatives. My own relatives make me uneasy. Thankfully, the young 'uns were relegated to the backyard. There were a bunch of great people whom I felt comfortable around. I did not sit there awkwardly, saying things that only made sense in my head, and thinking of witty remarks after it was too late. Being myself was enough, as trite as it sounds, and I managed to pull it off with minimal chagrin.
Tomorrow is indeed the graduation I'd be all decked out in a cap and gown for if the high school had not been determined to complicate an already difficult situation. Of course, had my illness not progressed beyond eighth grade, I would be graduating from the prestigious Gill St. Bernard's, conveniently located in Northwest Bumblefuck. The whole thing has not shaken my emotions or made me feel at all dolorous about the ruins of my high school career. The few people who understood saw that I made it out alive, I received myriad painkillers, and really great pot. It was by no means a usual high school education. Most of what I learned corresponded to just how much physical pain and negative emotion a person can conceal before they totally break down. And that was reinforced on several occasions.
College has acquainted me with how much I was never taught in high school, be it of the textbook variety no one remembers anyway. To counter this, I have been compiling a list called "Books to Read Before I Die." Education should be a lifelong process, no?
There is a difference between it and learning, one I will be better able to discern once I get halfway through the thing. It could be a while.
