Anniversary Effect (n.) – uncomfortable feelings, thoughts, and memories that resurface on or around the anniversary of an event.
I know, I know. It’s been a while, Blog. I’ve missed you and don’t begin to think for a second that I’ve forgotten about you. Things have been really good over here in Southern Maine. Vaccines, Spring, the ending of the semester, and the world starting to go back to “normal” has me and my family is fairly good spirits. Admittedly, I tend not to write when things are good because I’m moving at 100 miles an hour. Things tend to slow down when I get down, so, here we are with our first article in like two months.
I didn’t think I would care when I saw graduation pictures. I hadn’t given much thought to graduations at all – neither Parker nor I are graduating, and I forgot all about it. After about five minutes of scrolling through an Instagram feed chock-full of caps and gowns, I realized how shitty I felt. I put the phone down and was slammed by the anger and frustration I felt last year when I was robbed of my graduation.
The minute I felt those emotions and thoughts though, I felt guilty. Here I was, pissed off that others got a graduation ceremony, when in the long run, they lost a hell of a lot more their senior year than I did. I got to fully live out three quarters of my final year, complete with a championship season. They missed out on all of that. I felt even more like shit.
I’ve considered deleting my social media accounts, but when push comes to shove, I never do it. I like the connectedness, I like seeing what others are up to, and I love cultivating my own page full of things that are unabashedly me. But at the same time, I want to live my life off my phone. I want to stop spending hours of my life scrolling through images of things that I honestly don’t really care about. I’m terrible at responding to people, don’t even begin to try to snapchat me anymore (you’ll get a snap back every few days or so), and Facebook is only still kicking so that I can share collections of photos with family members that I don’t often see.
One of the things I miss most about college was being able to live in the moment 24/7. There’s always something going on and someone to do it with. There’s no need to obsess over social media because you were with those people when the picture was taken – liking things becomes more of an obligatory gesture of friendship.
Now I’m back home though. Hundreds of miles from people I care about, who are living their lives. Social media feels like the ghost of a bridge – a crude form of attachment that’s as strong as the transparent beams that hold it together. It’s not a place created for friendships to grow and thrive, it’s a stage. I miss my people and I miss genuine connections and maybe, it’s the loss or weakening of those connections that made seeing graduation pictures that much harder. It’s a reminder that despite believing in the cause of staying home during the pandemic and protecting family members, others are out there living their lives. Man, let me tell you, does it get exhausting.
It’s defeating going through a year of personal growth to the degree that I did, only to have it come crashing down upon seeing regalia. It’s a reminder that as much as I want to get over it, I’m not yet. And that’s okay! I shouldn’t be. My loss is different from your loss, but from each of our perspective’s, they’re terrible in their own rites. The newfound strengths from the past year shone through when I realized what I was feeling, why, and that it was okay to feel that way. The pandemic has been humbling, more to my own control over life and, yes, I have seemingly very little, but the things that I can control have the power to change my perception. And that’s the key – how you perceive your life dictates your happiness or alternatively, your suffering.
I want to be happy for my friends and even those I don’t know who got to graduate, after being unfairly gifted the senior year from hell. And I am – it’s just going to take me some time to process those feelings from last year and the immediate thought of, “well, what about me?” I don’t want to congratulate people with that thought poisoning my undertones. I mean, what do I even want in return to make up for my loss?
That’s what the pandemic has been all about for me. Swallowing the fact that nothing will satiate that desire to just go back to the way things were before COVID. Nothing’s going to recreate the images I had perfectly planned in my head about what 2020 was going to look like and there’s no one to blame. And that’s the worst fucking thing, isn’t it? Who do you blame? Where do you direct the hate when you’re feeling your most hateful? There’s no one and being hateful gets you nowhere but feeling like shit.
So, I put down my phone and sat in the dark as this all ran through my head in the space of sixty seconds, grabbed my COVID journal (maybe someday I’ll share excerpts – they’re funny) and put that shit on paper. Got it the hell out of my brain. Then, I did what every regressing adult does and leaned on my childhood comforts. I grabbed my book and read until one in the morning, when my eyes started burning, and the words began floating off the page.
I woke up the next morning still feeling off and made sure that my normal morning routine of scrolling through social media didn’t happen. I spent the day in the sun, reading, with my family, ignoring my phone – a classic Tyler Spence move and the best detox there is for when you’re feeling low. I was a little conflicted about sharing this, because I don’t want people to feel bad for sharing their pictures or their excitement or whatever. You deserve that happiness and to bask in it. From the beginning my goal has been to write this shit down and share it with you as I experience it. These are unprecedented times and who knows, maybe you’re going through it too.