Ten Years is Simply Not Long Enough

My mom was twenty-eight years old when I was born. I am twenty-eight now.

That kind of scares me - more than a little bit. I know that things are much different now, even just a few decades later, but... I can't even imagine having children - at least not at this point in my life. Well, I can, as my two nieces exhaust me and kick my ass every time I'm with them, but I know it's slightly different than having my own. And to that, I know the answer: I'm simply not ready.

Which brings me to the most recent blast from the past: My ten year high school reunion is coming up - it's planned for Thanksgiving weekend because apparently the organizers think that the majority of our high school class actually escaped the area and would rather use their family weekend to reconnect with their high school buds. First, I just don't see how they think people aren't still in the area, as so many, many people stuck around as a rule, but whatever. Second, I can think of about thirty-seven different things that I would rather be doing that weekend. And third, I just don't see the draw.

I really don't want to go - at all - but Kelly (she of the recently married) kinda sorta maybe wants to go and wants me to come along. And she thinks that I should bring Mike (whom I would bring in a heartbeat if he actually wanted to go, but do I want to put him through something like that? I really think that he would be the only reason I'd be able to get through the night, but I think that I care about him too much to force him there...).

I want to support Kel because she's my friend, but I just don't have much of a desire to spend money to reminisce about a time in my life that was angst-y and painful and filled with people that I would rather punch in the neck than ask about how their lives have been these last ten years.

Okay, that's a bit much. High school was fine. I really didn't have that much to complain about besides the normal teenaged issues. (I was in the marching band, so... I was admittedly a nerd. But I played the saxophone, so I was at least a little cooler than the flutists, I suppose. No offense to anyone who played the flute, but y'all were lame.) There were definitely people that made my life hell, and I hope that I wasn't someone else's nightmare, but I know that I easily could have been - I had a major attitude in high school. I have changed more than a little bit since then, and I'm sure that everyone else has changed as well. I'm sure that if I went to this reunion and spoke with the people that made me cry, they would be nice and pleasant.

But what if they're not?

I know that it's stupid to care what people think, but for my high school I was a bit of an anomaly. I went to college. I moved far, far away to Washington, D.C. I went to grad school. I made life choices that differ from that of many of my classmates.

I didn't get married and have 2.7 children by the time I was nineteen. I'm twenty-eight, and I'm not married. And that, more than anything else, will be the marker for how I am judged.

That's what I think, and I would like to hope that I am wrong. I do think that I am making a whole lot of assumptions here, and I probably sound like an elitist asshole looking down on my classmates because they didn't choose the same paths as me.

Why do I care what people think, anyway?

It's been stupidly said that high school years are the best of your life, but I don't see that. At all. At the time, everything seemed so fucking important - homecoming, the ACTs, relationships... High school was a necessary evil and while I made some life-long friendships, those have been maintained with care over the last ten years. They've required time and patience. It hasn't been easy, but they've all been worth the effort. Other friendships did fade away, but... it's not the end of the world!

Others consider college to be the best years ever, and I do admit that those times were totally rad. I had a great college experience, but I always felt myself looking ahead. I knew that there just had to be something... more. And I was right.

The best years of my life? Are now. I am happier than I have ever been, I have a job that I adore, and I am deeply in love with a wonderful man.

And I don't see that I should have to qualify that to anyone but myself.