11
year 11, letter 7, 3:26 pm
12 March 2020
hey dad.
time flies, huh?
today i missed my commencement. the school year isn’t over yet, but we’re all being sent home in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 or Coronavirus, the world’s latest pandemic, which had its origins in Wuhan, China. Anyways, Olin decided to honor the class of 2020 with a pre-emptive commencement ceremony today, just in case. Like I said, I didn’t go. I went to my Wellesley math class, Galois Theory, instead, because it is probably the last math class I’ll get to physically sit in. That experience was ultimately more important for me, I think. My math classes have offered me a place of peace, a true place of luxury in my time here. I guess I should say that I’ve been deeply unhappy in college, because I feel saddled with a responsibility that I do not want, of having the capacity to move to action instead of pursuing the subjects that I find most interesting. Which of course is selfish, but it’s another version of myself that I feel obliged to say goodbye to.
I also didn’t make connections to my classmates that I felt were meaningful, and in a feeling that is only accompanied by guilt, I resent them for not being a community that I connected with. I did build connections to mathematics; somehow I found a sort of satisfaction, or fulfillment there.
So I didn’t go to my commencement, but I will still graduate at the end of this semester. Can you believe it’s been 11 years? Can you believe that I’m going to be a college graduate? It’s long enough that it’s hard for me to tell the years apart; the gradient is beginning to fade. It almost feels like you were blinked away, rather than the slow transition of fading memories that has occurred in your absence. I suppose that now I’ve spent a greater portion of my life without you than with you. I don’t really know who I’ve become.
I don’t have too much more to say. I wish you were here. Sometimes it feels like no time at all. Other times it feels like a different lifetime. I should have bought you flowers. It’s been so long, sometimes I’m not sure that the flowers are for you anymore, but for me. Still, I should have bought you flowers.
I feel that I have been holding onto the shards of your memory for so long that they are simply a part of me now; I do not know where they end and where I begin. What I’m trying to say is that these shards do not hurt me anymore. What I am trying to say is that I miss when I thought I could still piece them all back together to get you back. I realize that now I can only appreciate what I have of you, and that these things have become something new on their own.
I love you, Dad. I may not know what love is anymore, but I know that I love you.