Dear Rudy,
Sometimes the moments that are meant to feel big don’t feel like anything at all. Today was our last day of school and it was raining, so I guess that was something. Ollie and Dad wished me good luck this morning, and Mum drove me to school. She parked and came in to watch the assembly, just like she did for yours. Having a parent at school is weird, isn’t it. I’d told Dad not to worry about taking the day off work, because a graduation assembly doesn’t feel to me like anything worth taking time off work for. It’s not like in the movies with caps and gowns and keynote speeches. It was just an assembly in the morning and then we got to leave.
I thought about how we’d all looked five years earlier, when our parents brought us to our first day. Our uniforms were all too big and our hats too stiff. My shoes were straight out of the box, without a single mark or scuff. Some of us were new and shiny too. Others had marks and scuffs already. My limited-edition brain doesn’t seem like such a big mark anymore, not after everything else that’s happened.
‘We did it, Brain, we made it. Can you believe it?’ Dee said. She was beaming. She always knows exactly how to handle big life moments. She gets things right. I told her it hardly felt real, because that seemed like a thing to say. The other students and our parents lined the footpath at the entrance to make a tunnel for us to walk through. I guess it was our chance to say goodbye to our friends in other year levels. I didn’t know any of them, not really. People were crying, even teachers were crying. Why were our teachers crying? I wasn’t crying, but I knew I wouldn’t be. I put on my sunglasses and hoped it looked like I’d had to do that because I was crying.
Maybe I was struggling to absorb the enormity of the moment, but it just didn’t feel like a big moment. Not like when you died. In that moment I’d felt as though I was watching a tsunami racing to shore, and there was nothing left to do but wait for it to hit me. I’d been frozen by the sense of grief to come. Graduation felt more like I was watching a movie about a large wave rushing to shore, but I wasn’t emotionally invested enough in any of the characters to worry about what might happen to them. It felt like the kind of movie I’d switch off before the end.
Mum was crying, actually, when I walked past her in the tunnel. She was crying hard. Her shoulders were bouncing and she’d wrapped her arms around herself in a hug. I don’t know if it was about me, or you, or her. But something had got to her. I’d hoped to comfort her, but she had stopped by the time I found her afterwards, and neither of us could say much on the drive home. There’s not much to say about anything today. I’m like a zoo animal released into the wild, completely unprepared for life outside my secure enclosure. I know the wild is supposed to be the better choice for me, for anyone, but I’m used to the daily feed and the zookeepers, who make sure I’m safe. I like the four walls, or I like what I know, anyway. There isn’t a great survival rate for released animals, and I completely understand why.
The rest of the year level went to the pier after school to jump into the water in their uniforms. Dee asked me if I minded that she went. I said I didn’t, because I didn’t. I just didn’t want to go myself.
I went to my appointment with Dr Lim instead. We talked about Schoolies and when she asked me whether I was looking forward to it, I couldn’t answer. It was something to do with the small things feeling big, and the big things not feeling like anything at all. It’s something to do with the calm moments that happen at Robins but not with my school friends. It’s something to do with you and Mum and Dad and Ollie and Aggie and Dee and even Mitch. It’s something to do with brain wires and cringe lists and nicknames and being in the moment and tracing the lines. It’s something— I just can’t figure out how to say it. Maybe you know what it is.
Love, Erin