My Commencement Speech

Congrats for surviving in the depths of Hell. Now before I get too far into this, I’m going to let you know this now; this speech is going to be a whole lot of sarcasm, sprinkled with, I followed the guidelines… to a degree. I’m not going to lie and say that high school was the best four years of my life, because it wasn’t. Sure, there were times during high school that I’m never going to forget, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a good thing. For those of you who know Harry Potter; I’ve done my time, 12 years of it. But Azkaban would have been easier than this. This speech is going to consist of two stories, and life lessons scattered around. It might be a mess, but that’s the way it’s intended. It’s like life. Life doesn’t give you all the answers. Sometimes it throws the quiz at you first, and you learn the right way, after doing it the wrong way. ..or ALL the wrong ways.

The first story I’m going to tell you is about the day that my grandmother passed away. This story, is the only story I can tell, and not make a mistake with. For some reason, this day will be forever seared into my memory. I woke up the morning of May 12th, 2013, to my sister’s daughter wetting the bed. I got up to her crying, and I got dressed to change her sheets. It was way too fricking early to be doing this. It was around 8:00am. When I opened the bedroom door to take the sheets out, my sister passed by me, and walked through the kitchen. I took the sheets to the bathroom when I overheard my sister on the phone with someone. I didn’t really care to listen to what she was saying. It’s not really my business. But anyway, I walked back to her daughter’s room. I was about halfway across the room when my sister walked in. I felt her presence, so I turned around. We met eyes, and hers were welling up with tears. “Raven, gram is in the hospital, and she might not make it.” I just kind of looked at her and I smiled. “Are we going to the hospital?” I asked. She nodded and said yeah. So on we went, getting dressed, getting coffee, and packing up the kid. On our way to the hospital, I recall saying; “Gram doesn’t ever go to the hospital.” No one said anything for the remainder of the ride. When we got there, and finally got up to the room that she was in, I walked in to everyone standing around the bed that she was laying on. But what startled me the most was my mom. She looked really mad, but she was leaning over my grandmother and was hugging onto her for dear life. At first I was confused. Wondering why everyone was bothering her, and that my mom was probably just going to irritate her off laying all over her like that. She was just sleeping. My next thought was; “okay, well what’s going on, and why are we here is gram is fine. Obviously she is, she’s just sleeping.” I didn’t say any of this out loud, but my mom’s words shattered my thoughts like glass. “Raven, come say goodbye.” I’m sorry, but what the Hell are we saying goodbye for? She isn’t dead, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s sleeping if you guys could keep it down. A lot of time passed between then, and when I finally got home. By the time I got home, my mom had been sleeping, and the rest of the family had ordered pizza. Apparently she died, and my mom wasn’t handling it very well. I only knew this because my aunt was coming up from New York, and she wanted to see gram one last time before they decided to cremate her. That’s when I figured out she was dead, and I also figured out that I was about to be dragged on a very long journey back to the hospital to see my grandmother be pulled out of the morgue. Have you ever seen a dead body? I have. Oh ho yeah, talk about some weird stuff to see at 13 years old. Before I walked into the room, and up to the body, my mom had told me that if I walked in and saw that, whatever it was that I saw, I was never going to be able to unsee. I hate to admit that she was right. For the next week following, that’s the only thing I saw every time I closed my eyes. But that’s all the memory I had left of her, so for a long time, sleeping was the only way to see her, and numb the pain, all at the same time. For days, weeks, months, and years following this, I hated everything, and I was mad at the world. I was mad at the God I wasn’t sure I even believed in. I was mad at her for leaving. But I was truly mad at fire, in which I believed took her away from me. It took me a long time to be alright around fires again. Now I just burn everything. But after my gram’s death, I realized that we as humans really are awful. The only reason that we truly show that we love and appreciate someone is after they die. No matter what we do, we love and care for them more, only after they’re gone, and it really is disgusting. We seem to have this kind of hole in our hearts that will never be filled, and we will never have enough. But we act so hurt when a loved one passes away. Not because we miss them, I feel that it’s more than that, maybe because we truly feel as though we didn’t love and appreciate them as much as we could when they were alive, and now that they’re gone, there isn’t anything in our power as humans that we can do about it. Death makes us powerless, and weak. It brings out the worst in us, and our true demons tend to show. I’ve learned to love and appreciate. Maybe not all the time, and of course there will be times where I don’t show it at all, but I try for the better of my close friends and family, which over the last few weeks I have gotten a lot closer to.

Now this next story is going to be very vague, and that’s the way it’s intended to be. It’ll start off cliche, but trust me, this is no fairytale.

Once upon a time, lived a far from innocent girl, who was in love with who she thought was the love of her life. Things were getting dull, and after four years, she stopped trying. She had been giving her time away to a new friend that she was getting to know. He was great, and funny, and made everyone laugh. Someone who made the hour long bus ride enjoyable for once. But things on the side with her and the love of her life were getting a little out of hand. There were countless nights where they forced themselves to stay up fighting, in hopes that by the time they finally got off the phone, the fight would be over. But it always seemed to pick back up in the mornings, no matter what they did. As their relationship began to get worse and worse, the more they started to ignore what needed the most attention, and that was the love that they shared. He started to work more, and hang out with his friends, talking to her less and less every day. She continued to go to school and hang out with her friends. She always looked forward to the bus ride where she knew she was free to laugh and have fun with no worries. But here’s the thing, when you fall out of love, it’s very easy to fall back in love, and when you’re in love, and looking at someone through a rose-colored haze, red flags, just… seem like flags. So she began to get closer to this friend on the bus, and they began to talk over the phone. Take some classes together, and hang out more often. But when she found out that one of the people that she used to be friends with wanted to take him to a dance, she wasn’t going to accept that. She went with him instead, and what happened next was something out of a fairytale.. For about 20 minutes. After dancing half the night away, a slow song came on, and they smiled, laughed, and danced together. About halfway through the song, they met eyes. They were both singing, and for a moment, they were the only people in the room, in the building, in the entire world, nothing else mattered. They stopped for a moment and stared into one another’s eyes. They both began to lean a little closer, and a little closer. At the same time, they closed their eyes, and their lips met. The world stopped. Her mind was clear, and nothing in the world was a problem at all. …But when the devil himself can sweep you off your feet, you’re in trouble. The time following all of this was halfway between, “Oh, I’m finally happy again”, and “This is ridiculous, you need to stop.” Skipping ahead again, she is now alone. Alone with herself, alone with her thoughts, and alone with her sadness. Everyone wants her to be happy, but she isn’t really sure what happy is anymore. But of course she does. She longs to take the bus still to this day. She looks forward to gym class where they can be together. Just them now, and they help each other out. Even after everything, she smiles the biggest, only around him. So, when the devil can show his true identity, and you still believe true that he is an angel, you’re not wrong, but you really are stupid.

Now while these stories may have seemed like all was bad, it really wasn’t. It’s made me who I am today. But from the first story, it taught me that people die. Whether they be people you don’t know, or loved ones, death is inevitable, it’s inescapable. But it makes you who you are. It makes you strong, and it helps you deal with other things. At that moment in time though, it won’t seem like it, and that’s okay. But that death made me strong, and it gave me knowledge. It has made me appreciate the little things in life, and to treat people like I how I would if they were going to die tomorrow, and I hope you can take away the same from this story. As for the second story, it will teach you the true meaning of holding onto a diamond, but picking up a rock, and dropping that diamond. You don’t realize it then, but you will after it happens. From this, I’ve learned how to appreciate something before it’s gone, and I hope that you can do the same. Not all life stories are happy stories, but not all of them have to have a bad aftermath of experience. I’m not going to say live life to the fullest and go skydiving tomorrow, but at least do what makes you happy. You live, and you learn. Sometimes the hard way. But it makes you who you are, and who you’ll grow up to be. So congratulations class of 2018, you made it.

Photo by HckySo on Foter.com / CC BY-NC