CLient U20.ND18 - Session 3

(Beep. Music fades in)

If everything were different or unchanged, rather, your graduation would be coming up. And now, granted, that would not technically be an ordinary day, but it would be classified as normal. It would be part of the standard ebb and flow of modern living. As some people say, whether or not this be accurate: People are born. They go to school. They graduate. They go to a different school and graduate from there. Or more acceptably, more realistically. You meet people. You say goodbye. You go on. You meet new people, etc, etc. But that cycle, as it were,  was cut short for you. 

I think I know when your graduation will be or would have been. It’s hard to say because I know the university is marking that date as your completion date all the same, but it won’t be the same. 

You see, my girlfriend works for your university, you know, and while she doesn’t have any students graduating this year, she will some day. And she’s excited to stand off to the side, seeing them ready to take on the world paper first. So she’s been studying graduation protocols, and rituals, and tradition and all that. It’s kind of cute. And comforting. Well everything she does is cute. But her excitement is especially cute to me.

All the while, she tells me about it. We go through old videos posted online, and she’s watched from a distance as her department tries to throw together some… distant and halfhearted graduation celebration. But it won’t be the same. It could never be the same.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You lost that taste of normalcy. One that was supposed to be particularly sweet. One that was well earned. Because you worked hard for that degree. For that small moment of triumph amidst a life of other difficulties. And I grieve it along with you. Or even without you if you continue to discount your feelings like this. Because I have been pulled into your world now, and I feel that loss all the same. I feel that loss independently of you, I should say. Partially through my girlfriend, yes, but I suppose that still does not entirely make it right.

But it had to be this way, you want to say. It kept people alive, you need to say. And I understand, I told you. I know how viruses work in dorms and similar environments. 

All this time, you’ve been hurting. And rather than acknowledge that your hurt wasn’t negated or erased by the necessity of the situation, you drowned out your silent sobs with the screams of the rest of the world. You wanted to prioritize those cries. Genuinely. And you know that your loss was so minor compared to that. 

And, on that, I can’t argue. But this self-flagellation isn’t going to make anything better. You can’t change how you feel. Nor do I think you should. I think you need to change the way that you’re looking at it.

Because, you see, there are pieces to this. There are pieces to everything that build it up and make it what it is. I tried to explain why you are grieving your graduation, your crossing a stage as a literal crossing of a threshold as it were, and there’s a reason you are trying to ignore your grief. Several from what I can piece together.

For one, it’s easier. Because no amount of emotion is going to undo the fact that the world is ajar right now. But on the other hand, and this is an interesting point, you don’t really want everything to go back to normal, do you?

Rhetorical question. I know what the answer is. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You don’t want normal. You want better. You want things to be better than they were before, and maybe, just maybe this is the breaking point that could cause that to be. Lofty thinking aside, there’s a chance. Now there’s a pause in the momentum. A forced opportunity to reflect and to see. It’s not much fuel for hope. But it’s something, and you earnestly want to hold onto hope. You don’t have much else to grab onto right now. 

I hear you. You did not call out, but sometimes or with some people, it’s obvious. So I have heard you. I see it in your heart. In fact, I see much about your heart that others overlook out of habit or otherwise. I know that you care about people and you care more than most. And you hear many of the same cries I do, just not literally. If you can call this literal.

The point is you don’t want normal. You want better. But I don’t think you fully understand what that means.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Because have you fully asked yourself what is better? Or what does it mean for things to be better? Personally I would make a very strong and compelling argument that you’d be in that better world as you are. In fact, more people should be like you. More of your virtues would be thriving beyond you. That would be a better world.

But also, there would be joy. There would be happy occasions and hard work, rites of passage, all of that would be celebrated. Together. We’d all hold each other and smile and laugh together. For the most part, um… Call me cynical or point out that my dad is dead of somewhat natural causes and that I hardly remember him anymore, but… there would still be grief in this new world just less of it. Much less. Any world with less grief is still a better world. 

I can understand why you’re making this bargain though. Sacrificing yourself and your worth and your happiness for everything else, a nondescript everything else. Because we grow up hearing and believing that everything has a price. Even if that’s not explicitly stated except how often have you heard the phrase ‘there’s apparently no such thing as a free lunch.’ And that plays into this impulse we have, especially as children, when we want to believe or we think or some psychological phenomenon I can’t fully unpack or describe that we have some sort of control or influence over the world. We want to believe that we can directly cause a vast change over what scares us because the alternative is so much worse. The alternative is being helpless. Unable to fight. Unable to do anything but… but lose. Or maybe we ask a teddy bear to do it for us, I personally think those are similar impulses. 

And I also don’t think that impulse ever fully leaves us. I think we want to put ourselves, just us, just one body, at the forefront as personally being able to broker some sort of deal to change something. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

We want to be the sacrifice or the scapegoat and take these evils down with us. But it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple. For one, there are many people who don’t feel that way. You and I are somewhat special in that.

We have our existential limitations. The figurative or literal lines of our body can only extend for so far. There’s only so much we can do. And then there’s the personal limitations we all have. We’re all different after all. We all have our own limitations, says the person who sometimes can’t pull herself out of bed. How rich.

But instead, I leave notes for people on the internet. It’s not nothing. Wouldn’t you say? It helps a few people out. 

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?