Life Update: Anniversary
Things have been pretty rough lately. It seems like my mind is all over the place, I can't keep it fixated on one thought for longer than a few hours, and then it drifts off somewhere I don't know. For the most part, I think a lot of this has to do with the time of the year we are heading to: the beginning of summer. There's a lot of things that happened either at the very beginning of summer or during the breaks when I was a kid. That is definitely one of the reasons summer has always been my least favorite season. That and hot weather; it makes me miserable.
The end of May and the beginning of June are marked by one very special occasion in Finland: school graduation ceremonies. When I was a kid, it used be a common practice to always have the graduation on the last day of May, no matter what weekday it landed on. This has since changed due to certain adjustments done to the Finnish school year legislation. But back then, the graduation ceremony was always held on the last day of May. And, if I am not solely mistaken, that was what happened exactly ten years ago.
anniversary.
I was thirteen years old. Typically, Finnish elementary school ends when the student is either twelve or thirteen, depending on what time of the year the child was born. Because my birthday is in January, I was always one of the oldest students in my class – along with the few kids who were born in 1999 instead of 2000.
The anticipation that had been building up inside me when the graduation day got closer was almost suffocating. I felt like there was something pressing on my chest all the time, my breathing was shallow, and all the while I did not know why I was feeling so anxious, so excited about leaving. The only thing I did know was that the day could not come sooner, and that I would never miss the times I spent in that school.
The semester prior to the one that lead me to my graduation I had been chosen as the Kindest Student of the Class. For this spectacular title, I was gifted a fake red rose, and a huge one at that. I do not remember if I was ever told why I was chosen or who had been at the fore-front of that decision-making. If it was my classroom teacher, the other teachers that taught my class, or my abusers. To this day, I do not know why this award was given to me; it was all just as fake as the stupid rose that came with it.
This anniversary has made me think about how deeply affected I was by the things that happened to me in elementary, and how frustrating it is because it has been an entire decade by now and I am still carrying the consequences of the actions of the kids and adults who abused and neglected me. For some reason, I feel like no one else from that class is thinking about the anniversary of their elementary graduation, because why would they? It was just elementary, not even the ending of basic education. But here I am, crying for days on end, having at least four episodes in a week because it has now been ten years since the very most traumatic period of my life ended. But, as it often is, abusers do not think about it like that. For them, it was just another graduation ceremony. For them, it was just another boring school tradition.
They probably don't remember anything about that day, but I remember everything, the clothes I was wearing, the beautiful summer weather, my family smiling at me, the stupid graduation speech I gave in front of the entire school, and the way I turned around to look at the ugly orange building one last time before crossing the football field with my family.
Finally.
Remembering,
ichigonya
