I just received an invitation to my high school reunion. My first thought is: It must be a mistake. I'm not old enough for 20 years to have passed since I graduated. Then I realize, yes, I am.
But reunions are for my parents -- for fat, balding, gray people who are done, who are ready to declare, "This is what I've made of myself." I'm not ready for my 15 minutes of fame. I'm still a work in progress.
The past is a series of entries and exits, and I'm still walking through rooms I could only peek into back then.
I'm not ready to close the door on the lives I haven't lived. And that's who my former classmates are to me: the urban jungle girl, the suburban housewife, the novelist, the actor.
I don't have any regrets about my life, but I don't want to invite any to dinner, either. I don't want to reminisce about all of the turns my life has taken, all of the choices I have made. And isn't nostalgia a sort of wistful regret? "If only things were still like that ... "
The truth is, those weren't such good ole days for me.
In high school, I was discovering my dad's mortality -- he had quadruple bypass surgery the summer after my freshman year. I was discovering my own vulnerability -- I had emergency surgery for a ruptured spleen just before my sweet 16 and was literally left speechless for days. And I was discovering how fragile our relationship was. Just like my mother predicted when I decided to live in my father's custody, a woman was replacing me in his heart. By the middle of my sophomore year, he was remarried and I was scared.
I don't want to feel that way again. I don't want to feel too smart to be happy, too intense to get close to anyone, uncool, ugly, like I don't belong.
I was managing editor of the school newspaper, cast in every musical, on so many committees my picture is on practically every page of that section in the yearbook, and yet I felt like an imposter, especially with my friends.
They were popular and pretty, with suitors to spare. They could afford to be exclusionary, snobby. I never knew what they saw in me. I thought I was the token Jew, the intellectual, a social charity case. Now I realize they liked me for all the reasons I hated myself.
Yes, we were different, and those fault lines have since widened. But I don't want to take up residence in their shoes now any more than I did then, and I'm sure the feeling's mutual.
I'm afraid of meeting someone far more intimidating at this reunion: my younger self. What if she doesn't recognize me? What if we don't like or approve of one other?
Whether or not I travel several hundred miles this October to drink beer and play soccer with my fellow alumnae, there's no avoiding this assignation with myself. Someday, who I was and who I am will meet, and I'll have no peace until they come to terms.
I received my high school diploma on my 18th birthday. Today, I am a mother, wife, daughter, writer, editor, and friend. I belong with my family, I love my work, and I have tremendous faith in the future. But I will truly graduate into adulthood only when I can look my past in the eye and see, reflected, self-respect.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
Comments