My ten year high school reunion is this summer. I hate that I’m excited about it, nervous about it, already regretting the drunk sentences that I know will fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. “You always got more attention than you deserved, but that’s okay now because it’s obvious you’re not getting it anymore.” “I never understood why you didn’t like me.” “I always thought you were a bitch and knew that someday that bitchiness would catch up to you. I’m glad it finally has.” “I have missed you so much.”
I know I’ll end up talking more about what I’ve done than what I’m doing now. “For three and a half years I sold sex toys and porn and helped people feel okay feeling dirty,” instead of “I take dealer calls and manage an order file for a messenger bag company.” To my former classmates, I will look just like I did (plus about 25 pounds) when we spent every day together in the Middle Of Nowhere, Maine. They won’t know that for a minute I had really short blond hair, or that I went through a long black skirt phase in college. They won’t know that I have long hair now because I stopped being afraid of not looking gay enough, of not being visible. I grew it out with the knowledge that the long hair might make me invisible to those I want most to notice me. High school classmates won’t know this, and if they did know, they might not understand or care. They will just see that I have long hair now, just like I did then.
And I will see their children and their spouses, and I will not know the details that make their normal hetero lives not so normal, and maybe not so hetero. I will not know who got married against the wishes of their parents, who is currently cheating on their partner, who has a kid they don’t understand in the slightest and don’t know why. I will not know what has happened in their lives from then til now, and they will not know what has happened in mine.
And I will remember that I didn’t really know any of them that well back in high school. Who knew or cared that I didn’t eat much if at all my junior year, or that my parents forgot to pick me up after every lacrosse game, or that I had an abortion halfway through my senior year? These experiences affected my life more than fourth period study hall or the party at Sam’s cabin. What happened to you, then? What did I miss while I was trying not to hate my body, trying to love my family, and trying to feel something, anything, about going from pregnant to not pregnant in ten minutes on an exam table?
So why then do I want to go and see again people that knew as little about me as I knew about them, people who have lived as much as I have in the ten years since we’ve been in the same room, and who will know just as little about where to start their stories? Why am I going to spend money to fly out and rent a car and most likely a hotel room?
Maybe because there was a point in time when these people mattered to me. I wanted to be liked and to be listened to. We all did. We all still do. Maybe I feel lost as to what I am doing now, in my life now, and remembering who I was then will help me remember parts of myself I may have forgotten. Maybe I just want context for my memories; to see the places and people that I know exist only because there are still pictures of them in my head. I want to validate my own history to myself.
Why ever I go, and how ever I get there, I will be there nonetheless.
Here’s to the potential awkwardness and laughter,
jameson.
