I graduate from my M.A. program today. I really can’t bring myself to get excited. I am simply exhausted and the whole time I felt like I didn’t belong there. “Who the heck let me in here?”, was on loop in my head. Imposter syndrome in coalition with other cognitive misfiring, I tell myself.
But I really can’t tell how other people feel. Not in a general emotional sense, but truly inside. In those hard to reach corners where light is afraid to trespass. People that I am close to will occasionally proclaim similar feelings of doubt. I don’t see it when I look past their eyes. Only in rare instances, do I see the same deep and enduring sadness dimming the light in someone’s smile. These are the people with whom I feel the most connected. The one’s that make me want to sit in red-tinted rooms with stale air to slowly uncover the meaning in this life. To find some purpose that allows us to raise an ethereal middle finger to whatever power created it all.
Instead, today I will flash synthesized smiles for the photographer so that the university may point to our happiness, online and in flyers to families, saying, “Look! They are so glad that they did this. You could be next!”. In truth, I am rarely glad to do anything at all. I’d prefer to allow the silent scream of my soul to overrun my mind until madness grips me. At least, the descent would be interesting. But I won’t. I’ll continue on with my upcoming job, degree in-hand, telling my colleagues that I am oh so excited to get started. And I am oh so glad that I can do my part. And that I am oh so glad that I am still above the soil.
And with any luck, I might forget that it is all a lie.
~Keep on rocking
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