Time Warp

Normally, as most of you regular readers know, I try to keep my blog centered around my life with my children. The lessons they teach me every day have become valuable tools to my survival as a mother of three. I enjoy working through the process as I write, and also sharing the knowledge with and garnering support from my readers.

This post also provides me an opportunity to work through an experience, but it's not about my kids. This post is about grappling with the past while having fun in the present. It's the philosophical discovery that the memories I have been harboring for the past couple of decades tend to favor the fun and positive and let go of the negative. As they should.

Yes, this post is about my 20th high school reunion.

Just like childbirth, my memories have shifted and faded over time. Over the years I have let go of the anguish and insecurities in high school and my mind has chosen to remember the fun and friends, the parties and dances, living large and proud. I really did have a great time in the 80's. I conveniently forgot that those years were also peppered with some insecurities anchored deep in teenage angst.

The second I walked into our reunion on this past Saturday night, I was walking right back into the quad, the heartbeat of our high school, and those old prickly self-doubts resurfaced. One by one they poked little holes in my inflated memories of those years.

I remembered that I always worried about what the guys thought of me. I knew in those years that I looked good and acted nice, but was it good enough and nice enough? I remembered the waiting around for a guy to ask me to a school dance during those first couple of years without a boyfriend, wondering if I would even have a date, as the days ticked away getting closer to those impending Friday nights. I remembered that I always had insecurities about my twin sister being the pretty one, and me being...the...what? What was I? The funny one, perhaps. The nice one. Not that she isn't funny and nice, but I had to focus on something to get through those years and that angst.

So now here I am, a happy and confident adult, walking into a room full of very nice people. We were all there just to say hi and see how everyone is doing. In the end we all wanted the same thing: a night of fun and reminiscing.

But by the end of the night I found myself haunted by those same old questions. Did I say "hi" to enough people? Should I have been friendlier to people, even those that I may never see again in my lifetime? Did I look good enough?

I suppose we are all still our teenage selves inside. It's a part of who we are.

In the end we can't pick and choose what we get to have back from the past. It all comes together as a package, so we have to open it up and dig through it all. Some of the pieces that were broken back then have mended over the years, but it doesn't mean there aren't any cracks. Slight glimpses of what used to be, still lurking among it all.

The inner teenagers did seem to come out in many of us that night. For some it meant that the sense of humor that was so famous back in the day came back out in full force. And for others it meant rallying some of us to the dance floor to have some fun, like the good old days at a prep rally. And others stayed by the sidelines a bit, just watching the scene, not sure of where they fit in.

For me it meant staying close to my posse of friends, and never far from my husband, a trooper of a man left for quite a while to entertain himself with the other reunion widows.

Overall I enjoyed the night. I spent time with my closest friends, whom I still love and treasure to this day. I tried my best to branch out and talk to others, but in the end I wasn't sure it was enough. I looked and felt great. But was it enough?

As much as I wish I had let go of that insecure little girl inside, tossed her out with the bad hair and shoulder pads, she was still in there.

And just like in the glory days, I managed to have a really fun time, living large and proud, yet still plagued with a few doubts.

Thus the process begins again, letting go of the negative, holding on to the fun.