Confession: My high school reunion is on Saturday and I am pretty nervous. OK I'm terrified.
I wasn't the popular girl in high school, not by a long shot. (I wasn't exactly a loser either, for the record. At least I hope not.) My fear is that I was forgettable.
During one of our reunion planning meetings (yes, I somehow found myself on the committee and surprisingly enough have enjoyed it. Although, side note: Planning a reunion is much more stressful than planning a wedding.), someone mentioned a name I hadn't thought about in years (probably 10) and I thought "Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about her!" Then another thought occurred to me: What if that's me? What if I'm the girl people say "I totally forgot about her!" when they hear my name?
I had a lot of self-confidence issues when I was in high school. I guess a lot of people do, but still, it was big issue for me. When I graduated and started living my life out of my little private school bubble, I met a lot of people who knew nothing about me from before. I was able to recreate myself, if you want to put it that way. Or maybe even be more of my true self, which is probably more accurate. I made a lot of friends and my self-confidence soared. I still feel better about myself than I ever did before.
The problem? It is very easy for me to go back to the self-doubting, self-defeating girl I once was, to slip back into that routine. Especially when I am surrounded by my past. The memories alone of how I felt are enough to do it. The biggest thing is, nobody ever really made me feel this way (well, not nobody but that's another story or two altogether). This was pretty much all me. All me not feeling good enough. All me feeling down on myself because I didn't look a certain way or wasn't invited to certain activities. All me for comparing myself to others CONSTANTLY. I'm really glad my husband is going to be there with me, because when he looks at me, it brings me back to reality and I can brush off the old stuff knowing it doesn't matter anymore.
I had a really good group of friends in high school and even friends who weren't in my regular group. I'm sad that I didn't stay in better touch with more of them (except for Jen Westerbeek, who I of course stayed in touch with. She's been one of my best friends--if not my absolute best friend--since we were 10 years old. Can you believe we've been friends for 18 years??!! And now our kids are friends!), but I'm really excited to see them all.
There are a lot of people not going that I really would have loved to see and spend time catching up with and I hope you know who you are (assuming this is being read by anyone... oops, there goes that confidence thing again!)
This blog was "Part One" so I'll try to do a follow up after the reunion. Hopefully it'll be of the "See, I had nothing to worry about" variety :0)
I'm reading this! I'm sorry that you were kind of pulled into negative feelings. I think I've blocked a lot of high school because it was really difficult for me. I kind of worry that I was forgettable as well, I feel like I didn't matter much to people (aside from a select few) then, so I matter even less now.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the reunion was a success though, and you can take some credit for that :)