Pompous and Circumstantial

graduate, v. :

1. To take a university degree

2. To divide into degrees; to mark out into portions according to a certain scale.


So.
I am graduated. In both of the above senses.

Well, alright, I don't have my diploma physically in hand, as I opted to drink mimosas in my backyard instead of sitting through an excruciatingly boring ceremony. But I did it, they have the paper.

And as much as I may make noise about college being a part of Real Life, etc., it has been forced on my attention in the last week especially that we are compelled to divide ourselves and our lives; we must make boundaries starting and ending points, everything packed neatly (or rather sloppily in some cases) into little boxes. We do this in all sorts of ways: with our chronologies, our personality, our friends. For those of us in the institutional educational system, it's especially easy at this point in life. Clump it into high school, then college, with each year given a neat little label-- FreshmanSohphomoreJuniorSenior. Or maybe by major--when I was a Bio major... when I studied music...Compared to most of life it's easy, neat.

I myself am especially prone to making such divisions. Always have been. I was supreme at compartmentalization (I'm still inclined towards it, but it used to be much more severe). I had multiple groups of friends, none of whom interacted with or knew much at all about the others. And each of them saw a different side of me, never seen by the others. In a failure/success of my system, as friend from group A happened to meet a friend from group B and shared a (true) anecdote about me. No one from group B believed it and it went down as a total lie.
Now, it's not that I was a superchameleon or completely fake--all of these sides I showed off were part of me, just drastically different parts that were easier to separate than to make coexist peacefully. And easy is good. Less muss, less fuss, less confrontation. I hate confrontation.

Time periods get the same treatment from me. High school was easy; each year of high school had a different feel, some tone or theme, almost like a season of a TV show.
I am not good with dealing with time, especially the past. Ok, the future's not so good either, but the creeping anxiety I feel when I think about the future is better than the crippling nostalgia that overwhelms me when the past wafts by. As in, nostalgia that is physically painful. Part of the compartmentalization process it putting everything specifically in place, which means it's very easy to find it again, exactly how it was. I can point to any one event and instantly say, "Oh, that was sophomore year," etc. And I can remember exactly the person I was then, almost become her in that moment. All of that gets packed up in the box.
Then it hits me that that will never happen again, never ever, and I will never, ever be that girl again. (Which admittedly in some, maybe most cases is a good thing, but the realization still gives me stomach cramps)

This epiphany was highlighted rather brutally recently, when one of my best high school friends and I decided to try and contact a someone who had been a rather prominent figure in our lives back in the day. Oh, all right, it was a mutual ex-boyfriend. We thought it'd be funny, which just goes to show how straight-thinking we were at the time. Of course, we ended up, if not regretting it, at least cringing a little--he was straight-up dismissive of us, and specifically of me. Admittedly, we hadn't ended on the best of notes, but there was closure. Even so, it was hard for me to believe that someone could just leave me behind like that. Put me so solidly in the past when we had once meant too much for each other. Shocking, I know, right? Especially because I had left him behind so long ago myself. That part of my life was so vivid, so important, that it never really occurred to me (in the important sense, not intellectually) that I couldn't just open that box whenever I wanted and go back to that.

When the past is gone, it's gone, no matter how many times you and old friends tell funny stories about it over drinks.

The danger of boxes is, they're tricky. They make it easy to think you're safe, think you've got it all taken care of. But too many boxes and you're in trouble. Maybe someone opens one they're not supposed to and you get screwed, or maybe you forget where you put something, or you're just too fond of going through them. In any case, it's going to mess you up. You can't live life so neat-like, to fool yourself into thinking it's easy and you're safe.


But still, it's hard to give them up completely. And what with everybody graduating or not graduating and getting jobs/more degrees and moving away (geographically or emotionally), I expect they're freaking out about how to pack up (or not pack up) their own little boxes. Both extremes are tempting: get a completely fresh start, throw everything away and sever all ties; or, cling for dear life to old friends and places and everything you already know.

Me? I'll admit, I'm more inclined to do the former. In a lot of ways, it's easier. And I know that there is a lot of stuff, and some people, I will have to let go of, like it or not. But I'm going to try like hell to give me life some continuity, to let it continue to flow instead of stagnating in the tiny compartments I force it into.

I'm a little bit better about my boxes now. I don't put away so much in them, with myself or with other people. I let things get a little messier, spill over into unexpected places. It's more fun that way.