Teen Angst Revisited.

I recently started receiving invitations to my 10 year reunion.

Now, the fact that this event will be in beautiful Northern California in October might seem like an incentive to hustle my buns out there and reconnect with my past. Right? Yeah, you would think.

Now, that's not to say that there isn't anyone from my angst-ridden youth that I would like to reconnect with. There are plenty of folks I would love to see again and find out where their lives have gone in the past 10 years. And yet. I am incredibly reluctant to go.

I went to an affluent high school in the East Bay. We moved from Utah just before the start of my freshman year. By the time I left for college, it would be the first time I had lived in one place for more than 2 years since starting kindergarten. It was not until my senior year that I finally seemed to find my groove and a circle of friends around whom - while they shared little in common with me - I could finally relax and be myself.

All of my good memories from California have to do with either family events (a trip to Maui with my family when I was 16 was pretty rawkus) or with that Senior year. That was the year that Adam, a soccer player I had assumed too cool to be bothered with a geek like myself, taught me how to use the dark room and develop my own photos. It was the year I took photo after photo of the athletes and sporting events, both for the school paper and for my Senior Project. It was the year I took 2 periods of Ceramics class and cemented my regret that I never applied to art school. It was the year of my first kiss, my first R-rated movie (The Spitfire Grill - still one of my favorites), and my first car accident (I got rear-ended by a Toyota).

This reunion would be my first time back to Walnut Creek in 7 years.

And the thing is. The thing is, I don't think I'm going to go.

Financially, it doesn't make sense to spend so much money on something I am ambivalent about. Emotionally, I am totally focused on the present and future right now, and there is very little time to dwell on the past. Taking a stroll down memory lane, having the opportunity to say "you were horrid to me". This does not appeal to me nearly as much as a lazy afternoon at Ocean City with the boys.

There are individual people I would like to see again. of course. But they are few and far between... And high school as a whole? Is not something, at this point, that it seems worthwhile for me to revisit. That girl doesn't really exist any more -- she really never did. The girl I was then was a hollow attempt to be what I thought I was supposed to be.

It took so many years to realize I didn't have to try - that just being myself really comes quite naturally. It was the trying to be someone else, for other people, that was hard. Once I let go of that, I realized I'm actually quite happy with who I am.

So, yeah. Reuniting with my graduating class? Revisiting a time in my life when I was so desperately insecure and painfully aware of the fact that I looked at the world in a different way than most people I had ever met - and unable to see that as a good thing?

I think I just made my final decision.

Somehow... I don't expect to be desperately missed.

That's really okay with me.