my baccalaureate graduation killed my grandmother

the master's degree ceremony gave my mother cancer

my Ph.D hooding brings an impending and totally out of-the-blue divorce for my beloved and very heart broken brother

i think my family is glad, and i would agree, that there aren't any more degrees to be had. if anyone offers me a post-doc, i wouldn't even consider it. i feel like i'm trapped in a bad novel plot where any event of my good fortune only comes at the cost of people i love losing chunks of theirs. (and these aren't sneaky events i'm wildly casting together. they really do coincide. it's tiny-baby-in-the-mange' maddening.)