Cut ties and the lies we used to live in
So 10 years, give or take an extra… I’ve just come back from my 10th year High School reunion… What a time it was. I’m still processing and thinking about what it all means, but I guess you can’t put the past away. Cliche’ that it may be, it’s been making me think and listen to that song Jumper by Third Eye Blind with new appreciaton.
In high school I rolled with a pretty small crew at my actual high school, basically just Dan, Jenn, and Mihan. They were all there this past weekend, and it was interesting to feel that old vibe again, but suprisingly the heavier vibe was being thrown by everyone I *didn’t* roll with back then. I talked to quite a few people that I probably didn’t pass 10 words with back in the day. It was pretty liberating, and yet sort of bitter-sweet. I suppose we all have that experiene at those reunions, we all change, mellow out, succeed and fail a little more collectively, and are hopefully wiser and kinder than we used to be. I found some old friendships that I’d known about broken, new ones found, some people gay who were straight, some people broken, others fixed. Which is all a long way of saying I suppose that as much a voyeristic thrill as the event was, it was also a mirror to who I am now vs. then. Then I think I excluded myself, these days I don’t as much, and I felt a lot more on the inside.
[Listening to: Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man - - (2:26)]
There’s a lot of power in being able to be who you want, set your own terms, and being able to really walk away from things you don’t like or don’t want to be a part of. I think one of the challenges, and probalby benefits of school and high school in particular is that you can’t really escape from that crucible though. We all go through that grinder, that gulag, and we take it in the teeth and find our rewards as we can. Afterwards we’re welcome to go on to whatever, either retreat or advance, fly away, or build our nests, but you always have those 4 years to look back on and measure yourself and others with.
At the end of the day I guess I’m pretty happy with who I am now compared to then. I’m so much more welcoming, and open, and I think I just feel safer and braver being myself than I used to. The slings and arrows of others fall a little shorter and less sharp I guess after gaining and losing so much. I suppose I used to not want to be in a position to fail, I didn’t want to try hard enough to actually find my boundries and find myself wanting. Now that I have some regrets about holding back, about not trying to convert potential into reality, I think it’s a little easier to try my hardest and accept that I’m stil going to often fail. The zen of regret. =)
I feel like there’s a lot more to think about, maybe to say, but I’m not quite there yet.
Perhaps the strangest connection of the evening for me took place with an old classmate Mandy as the night wore down. As far as I can recall she and I almost never spoke in High School, but walking along Elm Street after the main event had closed down, we started talking about her life, her future, and a bit about her pending divorce, and I suddenly wasn’t sitting back passively observing the night, but rather connected and sharing the night with her, and with those walking with us. In highschool I built a lot of boundries and walls around my life at the Day School. There were a few friends there, but I spent most of my time with my friends at Western & Grimsley. Fuck those rich bastards at GDS right? 
Anyhow I guess having gone through my own tough breakup, seeing some of my own potential future dreams shattered on the hard shoals of reality, I felt a lot closer to Mandy than I had to anyone at the day school besides Jenn or Dan probably since I was actually there 11 years ago. I guess it was the moment where I stopped keeping myself as an outsider and finally saw what I’d been missing out on with her and others all these years. Selah.
Anyhow this entry is a bit of an atavistic endeavor, and it’s getting late, as it always is when I like to write… Come on future, I’d got my nine and I’m ready for yah.
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Interesting take on the reunion. You’re braver than I. I’ve not gotten the gumption to digest it yet in my LJ…though not for any real reason. It was strange, but good, to see everyone. And I, like you, found some of the more thought inducing moments coming from people I had not been close to while in school. Different perspectives on old relationships are sometimes hard to take, but good for us in the long run.
I think in the back of my mind I always assumed that I’d see everyone again, that the random fringes of my old life would be somehow accessable in some real way. But going back and seeing the few who did return, how altered we all are, and knowing that so many more chose not to come back for a variety of reasons…well, that’s a pretty effective way to kick the idea that we can go home again to the curb.
What’s the line from Grosse Pointe Blank? ‘You can’t go home again, Dr. Oatman, but you can shop there.’