Grad photos = lie

My graduation photos were taken today. I hadn't put too much thought into them; in fact, I'd barely managed to remember to book them, which is why I got stuck with an early morning slot. But, my blasé attitude all changed last night when I realized: This picture is going to be around approximately...umm...forever. Long after my classmates have forgotten my witty retorts ("No, you are the one who is stupid") and aptitude for confusion, all they will be left with is this lone image of me.

"Damn," I thought, "maybe I should wash my hair or something." So, I got up early to get ready, but started thinking again over my morning coffee. Isn't making yourself up for a single day to take a picture to represent your time here until the end of days just lying? I mean, I've spent 4 years suffering to finish this program, and I didn't do it with perfectly coiffed hair and brilliant eye makeup. I did it with blood, sweat and tears (literally on all three counts...yes, even the blood, actually, especially the blood). And then I thought, "Am I suggesting that my photo shoot prop should be blood? Wait, I'm confused."

I think what confused me was the part of me that's a little vain (and not sure how to find blood at such short notice) and, therefore, isn't sure that the accurate representation of my natural appearance after these four grueling years is something that should ever have photographic documentation (the best description of my appearance upon waking would some sort of zombie-catfish hybrid...or if you want an image a little more easily accessible to the average person - I look like death). So, instead of trying to work out the confusion, I decided to make compromises. For example, I allowed myself to pluck my eyebrows...but only one side (I guess I should say, "pluck my eyebrow," but it just sounds wrong). Or, I could put on eyeliner, but I didn't let myself do it well (okay, that wasn't so much a matter of compromise as of skill, but the impact is still the same). Unfortunately, in the perfect illustration of exactly how bad I look on a daily basis, this half-assed effort was rewarded with countless compliments on my appearance today (secretly I wonder how many people substituted "Hey, you look less like a corpse than I'm used to," with "Hey, you look...umm...nice hair").

Anyways, it's still a lie. In reality, I look like death. But, in our graduation composite I will probably look like the living dead, a vast improvement and blatant distortion. In a few years I'll pay for it when I've had time to rest and live like a semi-normal human being (read: when I legitimately don't look like death) and I meet up with my school friends. They're not going to be able to compliment me on how unsickly I look, because they will have been looking at my lying liar of a grad photo for so many years. So, instead of having many years of people saying how good I look, I got just one day of hair compliments, and now I'll go through a lifetime of nothing. Then I'll die.

Stupid lying grad photo.