So in two days time, it will be graduation. I will be dragging my kids along to something that they don’t want to go to, I will be taking along a friend in the hope that the ceremony will encourage her to take the plunge and realise she should go, I will be meeting my aunt and uncle in Winchester, and probably falling up the steps of Winchester cathedral in a catastrophic fashion. I have visions of this. It will probably happen.. I have accepted this. Things like this happen. Like the time I stood up in a full lecture hall in year 1. Everyone was settling down, I stood up to wave at a friend that had come in late. It didn’t occur to me that the seat would retract and that I couldn’t sit back down on it unless I pulled it back down first. And like the time I snorted whilst trying to suppress laughter from the not so inconspicuous back row, also because of the same friend, and also year 1. I should have known she was trouble back then.

Anyway, the point is, I will probably fall. My aunt will probably cry. My son will probably be naughty and inappropriate and my daughter will probably sit there with an expression that screams that she wishes she was anywhere else in the world but there.

I wasn’t going to go. The only reason I am going is because of the trouble – maker friend. I have to finish this chapter with her.

It’s kind of like my lack of need for a grave to visit, or my lack of desire for an elaborate wedding, or even a wedding at all. I don’t see much point in ceremony. I mean, I understand what these mean to others, but I don’t need that to mark the moment, I don’t that kind of process to take stock of the the achievement, I don’t want fleeting and obligatory recognition through traditional and pointless ceremony, I don’t need the piece of paper that reduces the whole experience.

And I really, really don’t want my picture taken.

And I really don’t want to consider that my parents aren’t there. Those that have been better than my parents will be there, and that is enough, and for their presence I am grateful. It’s just that the occasion marks the lack, their deaths (literal and figurative), and all that comes with it – much like a wedding would, I suppose.

I also don’t want to see the experience closed and finalised. I don’t like the idea that my involvement with literature is done. The thought of it being over has haunted me since long before it was over. I no longer have a reason to read, other than the desire that I have always had but now that desire is superceded by other priorities, other things that have to be done. Obligations. Things that I can no longer ignore because I HAVE to meet a deadline, or I HAVE to read this. I am no longer submerged in what I love. I am no longer growing in the way that makes me happy. I no longer get to think and evolve with someone I love. I can no longer do what I am pretty damn good at. My circumstances and the obligations that go along with them will not allow it. There is no space for personal growth in the direction that I would like by the method I am good at. I can no logger justify my submersion.

These do not feel like things to celebrate, or mark by a ceremony. It has been hard enough to let go of what made me happy, what validated me to myself, and adjusting to the absence of my frirnd as it is without a definitive finalising marker screams ‘it’s over’.

I do realise the pessimism here. If I could change the way my brain works so that I didn’t think or feel this way, or other bleak ways, so that I could feel positive and excited about graduation, would I? I’m not sure that I would. I’m not going to buy into what I should think or feel just because that’s what’s expected. That’s not my reality. I can’t lie to myself about how I feel – I have tried, it doesn’t work. And here we arrive back at the fact that I don’t really want to go. I am going for two reasons only. One is  out of respect for a friendship and journey that began four years ago, in autumnal Winchester, that has evolved into so much more. And the other, is for the sake of those coming. It will probably be the only graduation my auntie gets to attend, and it might do some good for my children to see that hard work is recognised… even if it is through pointless ceremony.

So in two days time, I will be collecting a piece of paper that means nothing, and everything, all at once. It’s a piece of paper that I want to simultaneously burn and frame. A sheet that represents a journey that I wish had never happened so that i could start it all over again. It signifies something I always wanted to do and now, it’s over. What I love doing and what i do passionately is inaccessible to me, there is no career to be had in literary criticism for me. Now I must simply make enough money to support my home and family – that is now all there is to do.

The space I allowed for myself to fall further in love with thinking, writing, and reading is no longer there.

and i am supposed to celebrate that that’s that, literature, done? I don’t think so.