on unnecessary parties
The last graduation I had to attend was MB’s, last year, and I was very resentful and childish about the whole thing. The reasons were all tangled up together, and while I think some of them were fairly legitimate and psychological, some others were surface-personality-driven and less legit. I didn’t want to fly to Tennessee for two days, and I didn’t want to disrupt work and life to go to a graduation that I knew would be boring, and I knew it probably wouldn’t matter to MB at all whether I was there or not, and all manner of other reasons I would have known were petty and pushed aside.
If not for the other reasons.
I graduated from a fairly distinguished (if obscure) liberal arts college, one of the Seven Sisters, and neither of my parents chose to attend. No other family or friends came, either, and I didn’t have a party, nor did I get gifts or cards as I remember. At the time I thought that it didn’t matter to me, that if my parents were too busy or too uninterested or too whatever to not attend a five-hour ceremony outdoors with hundreds of people they didn’t know, it was fine. Graduations are pretty silly anyway, you know, just pomp and circumstance.
As the years have gone by, I have gotten more and more angry at them for this omission. My mom gave the excuse that she’s a professor, she’s forced to attend graduation most years anyway in her incredibly hot cap and gown, and she didn’t want to sit through another one. My dad’s excuse was that he was out of the country and didn’t want to take the trouble to fly home just for one day. Both of them, as I recall, began the conversation with “You don’t mind if I don’t come, do you?” And my answer was, of course not, no, not at all. But even if I genuinely didn’t mind then, I sure do mind now. Your only child graduates from college one time in her life, and while in the strata where I grew up graduating from college isn’t that special, I realize now that in the larger world it really is an accomplishment to be proud of. Even if you’re graduating from East Carolina University it’s an accomplishment to be proud of; from the college I went to, even more so. How could my parents not want to share it with me, or even recognize it?
Attending MB’s graduation and seeing all the people shining with pride for their children stirred up all these resentful feelings. It was not a fun psychological moment for me. This year, going to BF’s cousin’s graduation will likely make me feel the same way, but I’m braced for it now. (Also, the travel involves 40 minutes in the car, not two days off work and two plane flights.) But the paralegal certificate…well, that’s another ball of wax.
Those of you who’ve been reading for a while know that this certificate has represented little to me but a pain in the ass. I’ve been at it since January of 2008, but it’s been a hell of a lot more like a second job (where I pay them) than a learning experience. I’m also frankly embarrassed, in fact more embarrassed than I can ever remember being since I was a child, at how easily I have slid through this program. I have done so little work that I should be failing, and instead I have a 3.89. It shames me to work so little and do so well, especially when I see other people genuinely struggling in this program.
Also, one of the reasons I decided to get this certificate was to keep from confronting MD; another one of the reasons is so I can leave behind the job he generously gave me when I was in a bind. Due to all of these circumstances, there are few things that I feel about the completion of this certificate, and pride is definitely not one of them. People who’ve never been to college, who’ve completed this program while working full-time and raising a couple of kids, should be proud. I consider this something I did in my spare time that put me to little trouble and even less effort. And yet MM has decided that I should be proud of myself, and that I should share this nonexistent pride with her family.
I’m near tears writing this. I had no idea how much emotion I had stored up about this problem.
When I found out early in the spring that she had decided that a party was appropriate, I thought she was kidding and tried to laugh it off. But, um, she wasn’t. Several weeks later we were at Borders, and BF and MD were off somewhere looking at man-books, and I was trying to explain that I really felt no pride and was embarrassed about any attention being given to the completion, and she went off on this impassioned speech about this being a real accomplishment that I ought to be proud of and there’s just no two ways about it and my perspective was just plain wrong. She was insisting that I change my mind and my feelings about this event.
I stood there and looked her in the eye and I listened without comment, but I was really upset. How dare she try to tell me how I should feel about a program that I completed, that I was in from day one, that she has no concept whatsoever how difficult or humiliatingly easy the experience was for me? I want to have parties in my honor about things I feel accomplished for completing, and for someone to determine independently of my feelings that I deserve a party is goddamn wrong!
Okay. Calm. Keep writing.
I didn’t have a party for my college graduation. I didn’t even get taken out to dinner. And now she wants me to have an event for obtaining a certificate that is nothing to me but a resume-builder. There’s a small part of me that wishes she’d been around when my parents decided they weren’t interested in the fact that I’d earned an A.B., but the biggest part of me says, logically, if I didn’t get a celebration then, why do I somehow deserve one now?
I managed to talk her down to a dinner with just MP and MB and BF and me, with a toast, and somehow she forgot this and has decided to have a cookout and invite all the cousins and aunts and uncles and also JJ. Even beyond my personal feelings about this, I fail to understand why any of them would be remotely interested in me completing a 31-credit professional certificate at a community college. I am her son’s boyfriend. This is not even legally my family yet. That sounds cruel coming out of my mouth, because I really like BF’s family – to the point where I feel like MB is my own brother – and I like spending time with them at family events, but seriously, why should they give a damn? I don’t, and I was the one who did the program.
She’s now invited everyone, and she’s making a joke of it, calling it a “non-celebration”. Ha ha. It’s so funny to me as I’m sitting here with a lump in my throat. I don’t want any of this, and I’m being forced to have it anyway. I can’t stand it.
But of course I can stand it, as I’ve stood all the other stuff I’ve been asked to do with BF’s family, and even though this is different because it’s an event FOR ME and I ought to be able to say “no, I don’t want it”, it’s not any different, nothing will ever be different about any of these events, and I just want to crawl in a hole and die. Or move to Australia. Or maybe crawl into a hole until I reach Australia.
—
I realize this is not a terrible problem to have, that my mother-in-law cares this much about me, and I’ve been urged by several sources to try and understand that she just wants an excuse to throw a get-together. I will smile and agree with those sources on the outside, but here on my turf I say I don’t give a fuck. If she wants to throw a get-together, fine, but don’t make ME the excuse. And yes, she cares about me a lot and I am grateful, but it’s the same old problem of feeling suffocated by sweet-smelling expensive velvet. It’s still suffocation.
May 8, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“Writing it all out” often digs up feelings on a subject that I didn’t know I held. I hope this entry was therapudic for you. Graduating from college is a big deal, and your mom ESPECIALLY should have made more of it than she did – first of, simply because she’s your mom, but also because she’s a professor, so she knows the milestone that a graduation is! Heh. I remember when my sister got married – when my uncle got her wedding invitation, he declined it, saying, “Any damn fool can get married. Invite me to your college graduation – THAT I’ll go to!”
It was sort of therapeutic because I haven’t dug to the bottom of these resentments in a while, or perhaps ever, but since I still have to go to the fucking party it wasn’t a solution-oriented kind of therapy.
“…BF and MD were off somewhere looking at man-books…” BWA! For some reason I read that as “man-boobs”. ~snicker~
Hee.
I. HATE. IT. when someone tells me how I DO feel, or how I SHOULD feel. Your own feelings on your certification are YOUR OWN feelings, and they are valid, if for that reason alone. Now, I personally am proud of you for getting your certificate, but I’m not going to force MY pride on you. And you should let your family and friends, no matter how good their intentions, do that to you either.
You are? WHY?? I mean…gosh, thank you.
So. Here’s the solution. Don’t go to this “non-celebration”. Come down with a raging case of pig flu and beg off. Alternately, go, get raging drunk, and don’t remember any of it.
and xoxo and ** HUGS **
In all seriousness, thank you. You truly are the sweetest person I know. To tell the truth I may actually do the drunk thing. I mean, why not? It might be a lesson in not throwing me shindigs that I don’t want.
May 8, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Erm. That’s, “You should NOT let your family and friends, no matter how good their intentions…” Darnit, why can’t I edit my own comments?
I knew what you meant.
May 8, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Of course, they shouldn’t tell you how you feel about the certification. But it appears that they actually are proud of you. And I don’t think you should be telling them that they are wrong to be proud of you. It strikes me that you are doing for them exactly what you don’t want them to do for you — which is to tell them how they should feel.
Perhaps they are proud of you for lots of legitimate reasons, including getting this certification, and are using this simply as a way to express how they feel. In the end, its just a party, and I’m guessing that there will be lots of people there who genuinely care about you. Personally, I would jump at any such opportunity, no matter how flimsy the excuse. That may be because, as I grow older, I realize that the opportunities become rarer and rarer.
And as a last note, an unnecessary party is a party who may be joined to a suit, but whose joinder is not essential. And you got this certificate in your spare time and did quite well with minimal effort. I see no shame in that at all. If it was easy for you, so much the better. I’m long past thinking that everything worthwhile is also difficult.
May 9, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The realization that you might be expecting more from the people around you than they are capable of is something that you should consider and figure out how to deal with. It might sound cold, but you seem to be a very caring person who is cares aboutt he people around her…maybe to a fault.
These people you write about do not have those same qualities…and they never will.
BF pointed out something like this to me last night – that I expect people to try and see my point of view as stringently and carefully as I try to see theirs, and this is quite misguided of me.
May 9, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Here’s the thing…you’re an adult now. If you don’t want tthe party, don’t go. Yes it will cause friction, it will be hard to do and it will hurt feelings, but you said you didn’t want the party or the fuss from the very beginning. Remind some people of that fact and let them know that they can still have the party if they need an excuse for one, but that you won’t be in attendance. It sounds as though you’re going to be upset either way at least if you stay home you won’t have to get dressed up and put on the happy face all evening.
Except…they pay half of our mortgage and supply my income. Friction with that kind of entanglement I do not want.
I will say this, just because YOU aren’t proud of what you see as a non-accomplishment, doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t be allowed to. Just as someone shouldn’t be able to tell you how you should feel or think, unfortunately you can’t pick and choose who will be proud of what accomplishment.
It’s not like we exchange lists with all of the people in our lives that say “I want you to acknowledge these things and disregard these other things and do not deviate from this list or there will be trouble”. You know?
I hadn’t really thought of it that way.
May 9, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Duffy and Heather, I don’t know where I wrote in my post that I want to control how proud other people are of me, but I don’t. Others can be as proud of me as they want to be, but forcing me to do things because of their pride is what I consider unfair. If you’re proud of me, just send me a goddamn card.
Just wanted to clarify. I was going to just let it go instead of being argumentative, but I got into this mess because I was polite instead of standing up for myself.
May 9, 2009 at 2:16 pm
You know that you don’t have to write things in black and white for others to interpret things in their own way. I’ll not interject anything further.
May 9, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Seems to me you were upset your parents didn’t make enough of a big deal about your graduation and now your inlaws are making TOO big of a deal for another academic milestone…maybe you’re just a little sensitive to any issue with regard to parental attention? Either way if there’s going to be a gathering with good food and people you enjoy, and it doesn’t cost you anything but some time, I say relax and just try to make it fun for yourself. You’ve accomplished something really cool; be happy!
May 10, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Only you control how you feel. Only you control where you go and where you don’t go. Decide what you want to do, and RSVP accordingly.
May 11, 2009 at 10:44 am
Just a paragraph in I was thinking, “Hmm, maybe just a nice dinner with the parents would be nicer.” Then I got to that part and said “Yay!” Then I got to the “cookout” and said, “Huh?”
Yes, she’s using you as an excuse to party and I can appreciate that you’re frustrated as hell because there’s really not much you can do about it.
Except get drunk. That seems like it has potential.
Seriously, if you enjoy their other family get-togethers, is this mostly a lack of comfort with being the center of attention, at least in this circumstance? If so, is there a way that you can change the focus of the get-together, at least in your own mind, to lessen your discomfort?
The lack of comfort is from, among other issues, my social anxiety, which is a problem at all other family get-togethers, but will be so much worse here because everyone will want to talk to me. There’s really no changing the focus of that.