Sometimes I Write

I’ve recently been getting in touch with friends from my past. As exciting as that is, it’s also been a little weird. I am such a different person than I was in high school, yet there are pieces of me that remain the same. I’ve hoped that it was enough common ground to renew what friendship there was with these people. I’m sure they’ve changed as well. It’s called growing up.

In August I traveled back to WI for my sister’s wedding. While there I spent the evening with the woman who used to be my best friend in junior high and part of high school. Some rough things happened in our relationship and somehow the friendship slid into oblivion and we lost touch. I hadn’t seen her since high school and was really nervous about having anything to talk about. When I’m nervous, I talk…a lot. I couldn’t seem to shut my mouth that night. I couldn’t handle the moments of silence that crept in, and I couldn’t read her at all. I still don’t know how she felt about our reunion.
I felt this urge to tell her my life story. To somehow explain who I was back then and why. It doesn’t matter anymore, but it goes back to that dumb need I have to be heard and understood. I wanted to tell her why I acted the way I did, why I hid so many things about my family, why I was so tough and angry. Why I always spent the night at her house and never invited her to spend the night at mine. None of it matters anymore. Let it go. That’s what I told myself over and over again. She probably doesn’t even remember. I however, have the uncanny ability to remember random thoughts and conversations years and years after they happened. It drives Benny crazy. I forget to mail birthday cards. I forget about appointments unless I’ve written them on two different calendars. I forget to put gas in the van until it’s almost empty. But I remember the solo I sang in my Kindergarten play, and what I was wearing and the song that was playing when my best guy friend asked me to dance at the single homecoming dance I attended where we were both serving punch.  I remember BW’s football jersey number, and the silly jokes my 7th grade Science teacher told us while we dissected frogs.  And I remember the rain dripping down the windshield and the feel of the necklace in my hand that my boyfriend had given me moments before breaking up with me on Valentine’s Day in 1989.  Weird.  That’s me.  I remember odd things.  I remember things others don’t until reminded of them.  So maybe I remember things differently than those who knew me when remember them.

Last week I found a friend on Facebook. This guy was a light in my life in high school. He could ALWAYS make me laugh and he enjoyed doing so. It’s fun to see him all grown up and married with children. I have wished the best for him for years and I’m excited to have him back in my life. He still makes me laugh. I believe he was my first verbal sparring partner (in a good way) and I’ve only had a few in my 35 years of life. He trained me well. Through him I found another friend. I think this may be snowballing. I could be in touch with everyone I’ve ever known soon. lol  I don’t think I’m interested in taking it that far. There are a few people I’d like to forget thank-you-very-much!

When meeting old friends after several years, the urge is the same. Explain myself. Why is that? I’m not a bad person and I wasn’t when they knew me either. Do I have this twisted sense of who I was and it’s not even close to who everyone else thought I was? Why the insecurity? Is it enough to know they are doing well and move along with life? With me that’s rarely the case. I want to know what makes them tick too. I love people. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. I believe the people in my life have been there for a reason-even if only for a season. I also believe you can never have too many friends, but I’m certainly not living in the past.

I have come so far, or so I feel,

I rose above my past.

I’ve climbed tall mountains of uncertainty,

and been over fences in search of greener grass.

I’ve changed a lot, yet I’m not the way I wish to be…

it haunts me still – my past.

I wrote that in college. Those words still ring true to me after all these years. Oh, I’m not as melancholy as I was when I wrote that, but the question remains. Who am I compared to who I was and who I am becoming? Don’t we all wonder that at one point or another? I look at the two pictures of me in this post and I think. WOW! Two very different people with drastically different goals in life. It can’t just be the difference of 18 years, can it? The first  – a copy of a copy -was taken around my 17th birthday for Senior pictures and the second was taken by my best friend this summer for my 35th birthday. For my friends who knew me and loved me at 17…I hope they like me at 35 as well. If they don’t…well…they’re missing out.  I’m like fine wine – I get better with age. 😉  lol

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