Reunions Revisited

We’ve just slipped out of the time of year traditionally relegated to the celebration of- I dunno. Reunions. School reunions. Foremost, the high school ones. Which, if you’re like me and are the product of a small town, you’ll know swing by on the ten-year regular, on average, with some import attached. One’s schoolmates if from a small community did, afterall, accompany a fucker throughout a lengthy, formulative stretch of life and, when a reunion does roll around, it comes with a promise of their return to one’s life, if only for a day or weekend, souls once bound tightly ‘round memories and early accomplishments and perhaps they still do, though distance and time do their bit to weaken all ties that bind.

I was asked, recently, if I’d be attending. Not the reunion for the graduating class of 1986 from my own school, rather one for class having graduated from a high school in another small town in which I’d once resided. My years there were- Classically, I’ve reported them to be of my finest. In truth, just as with anything else within and about my life, it was a mixed bag and, as time’s progressed, especially in years recent, I’ve gone from celebrating the place to regarding it as somewhat difficult to have gotten through, as I’d – as a young kid in those days of the late 1970s, when I’d lived there – I’d not been able to shake the angst I’d felt after I was molested by a bigger kid a bit over a year before I’d moved back to Nevada from San Diego. It’s a subject, that, which isn’t my favorite, though I don’t mind discussing it, as the result of the sharing might help someone else having gone through similar and keeping it bottled tightly within only causes the shit to fester, so…

I’d thought for years that I’d handled the aftermath well, even better than perhaps most could manage to do, even going as far as choosing not to blame my attacker, suspecting he might’ve been systematically victimized by someone close to him, victimized more harshly than I’d been by him. It wasn’t forgiveness on my part but a need to free myself of the chains that comes from being any sort of victim, the chains from within that eventually cause us to victimize ourselves, preventing healing, closure, whatever. Overall, yeah, I- I tried. But the aftermath did fester within and I shut the fuck down. Completely down. I was nine years old with the realization that life no longer caused a spark inside me. Regardless of what showed on the surface, I slowly drifted toward self-isolation and- I began to feel that I was done and started to put myself into situations that could’ve resulted in my demise.

For years after having left that community, the positivity I found there inflated my opinion of the community and, looking back, I certainly know I aggrandized my experiences, there. Unfortunately, as I age, those same experiences have lost air and turned unrecognizable and, still looking back, I- I dunno. I can only shake my head and say that I don’t know. What I do know is that the person I was, then, is a ghost, now. The ghost of a long-ago child and, when I regard my former classmates, there, I wonder: do they see a ghost or can they see the man in front of them and, if so, do they even want to?

It was so long ago. I’ve rekindled old friendships from the place and successfully so, but the trick is to embrace the person that is, the person that shall be, rather than solely whomever we’d once known. And, did we really, truly “know” each other? We were just kids. As was true of those of us graduating from the high school of the town I’d eventually relocated to after leaving the former: we were kids. A few short years older for kids, but kids nonetheless, and kinda just tossed in with each other with the premise that we’d then be kids together in all we did, but graduation happened and that changed. We’d hit that era in which each of us begins to learn something of ourselves and what we truly want out of life, while, in one of God’s more cruel jokes, we’d not truly get it for another few decades, maybe – some of us, anyway – and a few haven’t gotten it at all.

A number of folks I’d attended school with, in later years, and maybe even gone on to be close with into our adult years and onward, didn’t make it to 58. Due to nature, dark chance, or emptiness or whatever it is those of us get when severe depression sets in and the unrevokable occurs. Or is attempted and, in coming out the other side, you’re forced to answer for yourself, in spite of the inablilty to describe it in words either spoken or otherwise what it is that’s been going on with you. Or prevented from doing as much by the wall whomever tosses up they’ve designed to prevent you from dark-clouding their airspace with your bullshit. I’ve learned that anything I might share just might be bullshit while theirs are nuggets of gaddamned wisdom and, being thus, are far-more economical to carry about and toss down at someone’s feet. No, I’ve known since a phone call during COVID what my head is worth. It took me all the way to the end of last summer to realize that it was easier to be free than to force myself to worry about that shit.

“You were discussing reunions.”

Oh, yeah. I dunno. It’s funny; I was asked by a childhood friend I haven’t seen since 1979 or 1980 if I’d be attending what would’ve been my class reunion in our old town, the one I’d lived in before eventually moving on to Lovelock. A decade ago, several of these folks were interested in seeing me, again, after so many years – indeed, decades. I’m afraid that the world’s polarized sociopolitical atmosphere – not to mention my own natural oddness – prevents what might’ve otherwise become a kindly way to wind down the remainder of my life with the kind memories of- Of ghosts. I’m one, as well. A ghost. I mean, who really remembers me from back then? And, is it me they recall? Am I someone they want to know and keep knowing? Some decided “No,” I’m not. It’s a bittersweet thing. To be cast aside by those of whom you hold fond memories and opinions. But, really, are they, any of these people, the kids I’d once known? Of course not. As I tell people, from time to time, about carrying relationships through your life and into tomorrow, you have to let go of the past and recognize those you hold in regard for the people they are and are becoming, rather than- Some idea of whomever in some other bygone time. Your peak is now. It’s always in the now.

I never heard of a 40-year reunion being planned by my own graduating class. If one occurred, it wasn’t felt necessary to include me in any way connected. But then I don’t keep in touch with ‘em, really. Nor they, me. I can’t recall the last time I had a real conversation nor any conversation with a former classmate from Lovelock. In 2016, one of the gals was prepping her family for a vacation in Thailand; she wouldn’t be attending if a 30-year was being planned. Another was attending her husband’s reunion at his old school. As for this year? As for me? I’d just as soon use my Netflix viewing habits as an excuse to not have to make a trip to Nevada for any get-together that might screw with my antisocial groove. I wasn’t even completely sold on attending my own birthday lunch with family, last month. Rubbing elbows seems like a lot of trouble – especially when it’s with the far-flung who’ve come not to care much for me or about me, anyway. Some never did give a shit, so whatever. I’ll stay here in the comfort of my own office, sucking down tea with a niece view out the window in front of me while trying to figure out the world on my ass. As George Harrison sang, “The further one travels, the less one knows.” I don’t know if I completely buy into that, but I get it, I do. The first frontier anyone must journey into is that of one’s mind. I’d agree that, yes, it is the most-important of ‘em.

Sometimes I feel as warm and fuzzy as a sociopath, but I know I’m-

I don’t know what I know. I know I’m content. I’m safe. The rest comes as a shrug.