Sail-Away Party
I'm done with college. Now, I have to become a person.
The ways the days and hours pass, you'll never understand / Falling like rain through your hands
- Fountains of Wayne, "Troubled Times"
Dear adults in my life,
I am now graduated and in the possession of a bachelor's degree. For the first time since I entered Kindergarten, I am not waking up with a schedule for my next class. The long work is at long last complete.
Every culture on Earth has its own version of the rite of passage, the ceremony wherein a child is said to become an adult. The age, however, is always different: a Bat Mitzvah at 13, a Quinceñera at 15, a first (legal) taste of beer at 21. It is tempting to take my graduation, my exit out from the shadow of the 16-year word “Education,” as another example.
The obvious critique of such rituals is that the age of adulthood is effectively arbitrary. This is to some extent true, but for a necessary reason: the moment a person loses the innocence we associate with childhood is idiosyncratic and unpredictable. For some, it is when they are first affected, directly or indirectly, by an act or threat of violence. For some, it is when they become acutely aware of the expectations being placed upon their shoulders, and what sacrifices are required to meet them. For many, it is when they become responsible for their own well-being; for the luckiest among us, this is after they have a college diploma.
For me, it was the year I realized I was transgender. That same year, our nation invited the little man into the big house to let him tear us apart from the inside. That morning, the 9th of November, 2016, I first truly grasped the number of people in this country who are motivated by fear and hatred of those they perceive as an other; a desire to make those people go away, even by unconscionable means, so they can continue to live in a bubble of simple unquestioning reality. That morning, I attempted to bury the nauseous bubble in my chest by deciding I could not reveal the newly discovered lie of my being until I knew I was safe, until my country returned to normal.
But the moment of metamorphosis was not when I realized there were fellow Americans committed to my persecution. The moment was when I realized that they were not going away. That I would live the rest of my life with this sword dangling over my skull, waiting for the thread to snap. That I would have to pay in courage for the chance at a full inner life most receive free. That my struggle was nothing compared to the unconscionable numbers of my people living in true poverty, insecurity, or danger. So I made my choice, because the choice was already made. As I wrapped myself in the blanket of my new community, immersed by the total acceptance I could never have beyond its walls, all the while immersed in the fear and pain my siblings are forced to bear, the world of the typical 14-year-old slipped further and further from my hands.
I yearn, as we all do, for a simple path through tranquil seas. Instead, at the beginning of the rest of my life, I stand staring into the screaming hurricane of possible futures, trying to navigate my little vessel into a safer harbor. The route there is neither clear nor straight. It will twist and turn and loop back on itself. The quiet at the end of the voyage may only be a temporary shelter, if it is not a trick of the water and light. Yet I have no choice but to go.
The moon will wax and wane, the stars will circle overhead, the Earth will orbit the Sun will orbit the Galaxy. I will lose my favorite earrings and my favorite people. The most important days will arrive and depart without staying for dinner. The world will rearrange itself, then rearrange again, too fast for me to keep up. Concerned parents will lobby to ban the modern objects of their ancient panic. Bad things will happen to good people, good things will happen to bad people. Occasionally there will be some justice. It won't be often enough.
Viewed in its best light, the rite of passage I have undertaken is not itself a transition from childhood from adulthood. Rather, it is a celebration of that moment, at whatever time and in whatever form it occurred for each member of my graduating class. A joyous substitute for whatever wounds, bloody and banal, thousand cuts and single stroke, were the true catalyst of our maturity. A yearly sail-away party for each of two million tiny ships, where we can pretend, for an afternoon, that most do not already bear the scars of the waves.
For all my sobriety, this is the version of graduation I got. I stood shoulder to shoulder with many of the people I love most in this world, and we smiled, and we sobbed, and we tossed our little square caps into the air. We saluted the skies to the people we were, the people we are, the people we will become. The pomp and circumstance there not to aggrandize, but because no ceremony less than the maximum can shoulder the burden of our parting lives.
Someone once told me college is like adult Disneyland — and like Disneyland, eventually, we have to go home. Disneyland is special because if we return, when we return, we have become too old, too weathered, too jaded to see beyond the plastic. College, like the day it ended, was so perfect it was easy to forget how imperfect it really was. For every friend who stood beside me was another's ghost, lost to coldest misfortune, hottest conflict, or lukewarm entropy of drifting acquaintance. It’s all plastic now. But there is still magic, out in the unknown, where the maps are etched with dragons.
It is time to inherit the world, as we once inherited this world of concrete halls and brick walkways and midnight trips for burrito bowls. The world we must now leave to our successors, the class of 2029, so they can find all the loves and heartbreaks and triumphs and failures ahead of them. So they can write their name in its stones, as its stones have written their names in our hearts.
The sun sets as it rises. The tide ebbs as it flows. Now, I cast off, and let the wind carry me to the lands beyond. I bid farewell to the two children on the shoreline: the boy whose face I wore for so long and the girl whom I so rarely got to be. Then I will turn, with clear eyes, and search for the next horizon.
Ready or not, here I come.
- Skyler