Through The Wringer: The Graduation Post, Part I

It seems that I was gone for longer than 4 days. Vermont was cold and rainy--the mountains were lovely, really, cast, occasionally, in painterly light, but mostly covered by overhanging, crying clouds.

My sister's graduation was a miserable experience. It took place outside (beneath a tent)in the most frigid May weather I have ever experienced, and it threatened to rain the entire time. Eventually it did. I was so cold. The pandemonium that is par for the course after most ceremonies of this nature was no less par for the course on Sunday and tensions among my set were high. I won't start with the details because the amount of minutiae I'd have to go into is not worth it, simply put. Let's just say that itineraries and personal agendas have to give way for the greater good, that some people need to learn to determine when a moment is not about them, but someone else.

And sadly, as a result of a conversation that came up, rather organically, between my sister (the graduating one) and myself, I felt the space between us widen--perceptibly. I have tried to make my peace with the fact that she doesn't really want anything from me--she is okay with the periphery of the sibling relationship, and I have tried to be okay with it. I felt the final break like a perceptible snap.

So during the ceremony, I felt cold on the outside and on the inside. Due to the snafu I alluded to in the second paragraph, I couldn't even bring myself to pose with the family in her graduation pictures. I decided it would be better not to mar the record with my stress-contorted visage. And I felt sick. And horrified.

In other ways, the trip was a success. The ride up went remarkably well; we made good time even with our pit stop at the Herkimer Diamond Mines where we beat rocks in the quarry with hammers. I, not knowing exactly what a trip to this place would entail, was wearing Franco Sarto heels. I had on heels in a diamond mine. I beat rocks with a hammer while wearing heels. I hope the people in the back caught that. Another long story, but that was odd and fun and so off the beaten path--really charming and one of the memories that will probably mean something to me ten years from now. Imagine the family dog trotting through the quarry because she refused, categorically refused, to be left in the van during this rock-beating-in-search-of-the-Herkimer-Diamond-excursion.

My stepdad and his father also came up (separately) for the graduation, and I felt truly, unconflictedly that I forgive him (my dad) for everything. And when I embraced him it was an organic gesture, something I wanted to be doing. I wanted to communicate to him that I forgive him. I wanted him to know that.

Yet this was a weekend in which so much of my past was dredged up, yet again, and I am still so broken in so many places. Family. This one unit of people have your fundamental traumas in common with you--perhaps they caused them. This is what complicates the interactions. Our Friends are a release from trauma. They are the people with whom we trade war stories, but the reprieve is that they weren't there (usually) for them, so we can get the distance required to interact without issues. But with family, you try to love while remembering what happened to you and it's just all too close and too present and you don't even all remember it the same. Devastating. After C's graduation, the whole experience was like being 6 again. I felt powerless. I started to cry and couldn't stop. I had to go to bed and sleep (with my heating pad) in order to get warm. I just could not get warm for the longest time.