I'm Doing What?

I'm going to my ten-year high school reunion on Friday, August 22nd. It's a little bit shocking still to me, even though I have had the plane reservations for a month now and just bought the incredibly overpriced event tickets for myself and a guest. I'm staying with my friend Erica in Western WA, not particularly close to where I grew up and went to high school. Actually, it's far enough away that we got a hotel room for the night in the town where the reunion is being hosted.

At Erica's request, I looked for some old pictures of myself. The only problem is that I had packed everything in boxes in preparation for my August 1st move that never happened. Since my new move date is September 21st, I just decided to leave everything packed because, really, how often do you need to look at ten year-old photos of yourself? Well, the answer is: not very often unless you have a high school reunion coming up and someone wants to see what you actually looked like in high school. THEN and only then, will you need photographic evidence that you look like a different version of yourself than you do now.

When I look at the photo above I see a young woman at the ripe age of 17. She's almost shining with possibility and promise. She didn't know what was ahead of her, all she knew was that something - anything had to be better than what was behind her. If someone had told her on her graduation day that she'd be pregnant in six years and a single Mom within seven, she would have laughed and maybe squinted her eyes a bit with the secret knowledge that she always knew her life wouldn't turn out exactly the way she thought it would. She knew that much, even if she had faith in the world to always protect and comfort her.

In high school, I was the girl that used too many big words and read too much. I didn't fit in with the athletes, the party crowd, the super smart kids, or the drama kids. I didn't have many friends and I was cruel to some of the ones that I had for petty reasons. I joined every single club and after school activity with the hopes of boosting my resume enough to get a scholarship to an out-of-state college. I was so busy and so involved with my boyfriend that I never really had the time for friends.

In preparation for my reunion, I've had to go through 12-step processes with several of my fellow classmates. "I'm sorry I was needlessly cruel to you," I'd begin, "I'd like to apologize for my behavior, even though I know it's been so long and that there is really nothing I can say or do to make it better. I'm sorry if I hurt you." Paused silence as I listened to their reply. "No, I'm not in AA. Why do you ask?" The conversations only got better from there. They were humbling, to say the least.

With my conscious as clear as it can be, I feel ready to board the plane on Thursday and head back to the place where I grew up. I can't call it "home" because it was only ever home until I turned 17. My parents moved from the Seattle-area to Houston when I was studying at Oxford during my junior year of college. I manage to go back to Seattle once every couple of years to see my extended family. This time, I hope to see some friends that I've lost touch with and maybe make some new acquaintances. Although I'm an older, more cynical and heavier version of myself now, I have a freer heart and a kinder spirit. I know that I don't have to fight for my place in the world and I'd like to be able to project that somehow.

How I present myself now can't be much worse than I how I presented myself in high school. Some people from those days will remember me looking like this:

"No invader beats a RAIDER. We'll go down in history!"

Anything has to be better than my body dressed in a colonial outfit, brandishing a sword to fight the marauding Native American warriors away from the Western outposts, with a giant head and felt hat. I actually made a kid cry once when I waved at him. I'm not sure he gathered all the racial and socio-economic problems latent in having a high school mascot called the Raiders in the same town where all of the junior high schools are named after Native American tribes. If he had, we both might have started crying. To that little boy, I was just a scary giant head with bushy eye brows floating above a disproportionate frame. My little boy would laugh at this photo and not believe it was his Mom under that costume. He sees me as a set of open arms that are always ready to hug him and voice that's ready tell him that I love him.

Unquestionably, my life has improved since 1998.