Anticlimactic Life Moments

Have you ever thought that you should be feeling excitement or sadness because of an important event going on in your life, but you don't really feel anything at all? An event that you've been thinking of or working towards for a long time, but then it passes without any acknowledgment at all?

It's a weird feeling. For instance, yesterday was my last shift at a part time job that i've had since 2007. When I started there the company was about 20% of the size it is now, there's only a couple people who've been there longer than me. I had this job in university, i've taken it with me when I lived in other provinces (remote work) and I kept working there even when I got a full time job elsewhere in 2012. I've been their emergency go-to person when they're too busy in the evenings, and i've taken advantage of their extra-curricular activities like hiking and bowling. I've been saying for over a year now that i'm going to resign, and I finally did it. I worked 8:30-4:30 yesterday, and at 4:30 I just stood up, got my stuff, looked around a bit, and walked out. It's not like I expected a party or anything... I guess I just thought my last day would be a little more climactic.

I also never went to any of my graduation ceremonies. I have three degrees but each time I was unable to go, due to being out of town or out of the province. It's weird to just walk out of your last exam, get into your car and drive home, knowing you've just completed a chunk of your life and now all there is to do is wait for the diploma to arrive in the mail. (Although my education faculty friends and I had a big party of our own the night after we did our last exam, so I suppose that's a climactic point.)

Anyone else care to share their anticlimactic moments?

 

My Masters degree was totally anticlimactic. I didn't even attend the graduation. I'd been working in my field for a few years at that point, so it didn't have the same impact as my Bachelor's degree.

 

My BA took me 6.5 years to obtain. I worked at least a part-time job during most those years. During that time my life underwent several major changes (one of which I won't post in an open forum), and by the time I graduated I just wanted it to be over. I graduated in December, the commencement was the following May, which I forgot about. My mother was very disappointed that I didn't walk the stage, and couldn't understand why it wasn't important to me.

My father's death. I wasn't sad when he died becuase his quality of life was pretty much shit, and I wasn't happy that his misery was finally over. I was pretty much neutral, which was a very strange feeling, more like a lack of feeling.

 

For years I wondered—and worried—about whether I would react appropriately to climactic moments involving grief or loss. More recently I've come to understand and accept that everyone's reaction to such events are different and intensely personal, and I don't need to worry anymore.

...

Two of my most anticipated climactic moments of high school were pretty big letdowns for me: prom and graduation, and to an extent I guess I still haven't let those letdowns go. Commence pedantic rambling:

Our school was small enough that junior and senior prom was combined. During my junior year I was enjoying the second year of my first serious relationship, with a girl one year my senior, and I wanted very much to take her to prom with me. My parents were still struggling with my relationship and told me they didn't want me to go, fearing the social fallout that might take place if I showed up there with my girlfriend. I'd really been looking forward to going and still think I would've enjoyed it that year: I was friendly with many in the class above me, and it was being held at Tavern on the Green. My parent offered to pay for my girlfriend and I to spend a night together at a swanky hotel in Manhattan instead, but I was, stupidly in retrospect, too pissed off at the time to take them up on the offer.

They mellowed out a bit in time to be okay with me going to senior prom, but the class a year behind mine was full of homophobic assholes that I had no desire to spend the evening around, not to mention the fact that the school changed venues from the Tavern to a cruise ship, with no way to get away from those junior year assholes. So, I didn't go.

Graduation was disappointing thanks to our required dress code. Rather than caps and gowns, the women wore white dresses and the guys wore white jacket tuxes. I dreaded donning a faux wedding gown and wanted to wear a (feminine) white suit instead, but no go. Womp womp womp.