Why yes, I am feeling a bit belligerant. Why do you ask?

I'm starting to get a little stressed out about the events surrounding graduation, particularly the slew of stuff happening on Friday. PBK initiation at 2, Honors Dinner at 5, convocation at 7. When am I supposed to chill with the fam? Sometime on Saturday, between the three-hour ceremony and the two parties we're supposed to attend? Sunday, when they're heading home at some ungodly early hour?

I'm not complaining that I'm graduating, I'm just chafing a little under all the expectations everybody seems to have about what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. I don't want to go to honors dinner and I don't want to go to convocation, but I feel like people are expecting me to. I want graduation to be relaxed (Italian—everybody just hangs out and is cool, "Ciaaoooo,"), not an endless round of things that have to be endured.

This tends to be a pattern in my life; I have a hard time saying no to anything. A friend told me once, in the middle of a fight, that I made it impossible to say "no" when I asked/ordered something.Retrospectively this makes me laugh; I can't say no to anything, either, so I think it all balances out. I get a sick feeling in my stomach if I feel like I'm not living up to expectations—even if they're just what I think expectations are, and not what anybody's actually told me they expect. Do my parents expect me to go to convocation? They haven't said, and I don't think they really care all that much, but the idea of skipping it makes me uncomfortable nonetheless.

Clearly I have issues.

Anyway. Here's how it's going to happen, at least as of right this minute, when I'm writhing a little bit at the idea of facing all of this and fed up with people asking me to do things that I don't want to. I'm going to go to PBK and the honors dinner, but I'm going to skip convocation and just hang out with my family. Maybe we'll go get ice cream. Maybe we'll go to the beach. I don't know; it could get crazy. I mean, not that crazy, since my parents are the ones who gave me this overdeveloped sense of responsibility in the first place, but you know, crazyish. Okay, mildly interesting. Shut up.

Saturday, I will go to graduation. I will wear shorts and a tanktop under my robe; maybe I will wear flip flops and maybe I'll wear dress shoes. I will certainly wear bug spray and sunglasses. I may carry a purse despite orders not to, and I will have my cell phone in my pocket so I can text message my friends. I will go to two receptions, where I may or may not drink more margaritas than is strictly prudent while wearing the new dress I bought for $15 at Old Navy yesterday. Then I will hang out with my parents more in the evening, maybe see a movie or watch my cat try to take her new collar off.

Because it's my graduation, dammit. It really is, for once, all about me.