Pomp and Circumstantial Existentialism
Graduation isn't always a milestone celebration

By Lauren Duffy

I didn't attend my college graduation. No robe or mortarboard, no "Pomp and Circumstance," no backyard graduation BBQ.

Although I missed out on dozens of graduation checks by forgoing the post-grad picnic (the oh-so-smart college graduate made that dumbass decision -- who in their right mind gave her a degree?), I honestly never regretted my decision to skip the actual ceremony.

Until recently, I've chocked up this indifference to the various circumstances that surrounded my college career: I had graduated two years behind schedule; my very large university was notorious for conducting painfully long ceremonies; I had finished classes in December and was working a full-time job by the time commencement came around in May; yada, yada, yada.

And I mean, seriously -- four hours of Swamp-Ass Central just to hear some supposed bigwig spout clichés about the meaning of post-college life? Thanks, but I'll take my diploma in the mail.

However, as my college days recede further into the past, I'm beginning to think that my reluctance to attend graduation didn't have as much to do with disinterest as it did with self defense.

The thing is, I've never been the type of person who simply takes life as it comes. Each of the milestones I've experienced -- first kisses, first jobs, first cars, first apartments, etc. -- has been over-analyzed and over-thought.

Is it supposed to feel so anticlimactic when you graduate?

Does buying a couch for their new apartments send other twentysomethings into a dizzying spiral of self-awareness and self-doubt?

Is it normal that that guy burped in my mouth when he kissed me? (I was able to field this one pretty easily -- hellz to the ever-lovin' no.)

The point is that I've never been able to just experience something and let it be what it is. I have this compulsion to put my life (in all its mundane glory) under a microscope and examine whether it measures up to what I thought it would be like or what I imagine it is like for my peers.

And something tells me that bailing on my college graduation was my subconscious attempt at protecting those OCD neurons from going into overdrive. Graduation wouldn't have marked the fulfilling end to my life as a student -- it would have been an anxiety-ridden sweat-fest, plain and simple.

I keep waiting for the day when I can shut down the portion of my brain that doesn't allow me to enjoy the different stages of my life without also throwing me into an existential panic attack.

I am so not there yet.

But I'm learning. With the help of a homemade cocktail (one part denial, two parts Xanax, and a whole lot of living vicariously), I'm slowly dealing with my over-consciousness of life and of my purpose in living it.

And although I wasn't able to enjoy my own graduation the way I might have hoped to in another life, each May my happy pills and I get a kick out of wishing the rest of my fellow college grads the best as they venture out into their own worlds of pomp and circumstance.