After months of fretting and anxiety, I was dragged to my 10 year high school reunion this past weekend, very much against my will, and fully anticipating I would end the evening crying in the bathroom as I ended every school dance I ever attended.
A friend from high school informed me such cowardice would not be tolerated and she would pick me up Saturday at 8 a.m., and I was expected to wear a dress, and was going to have a great time.
We arrived at the venue an hour after the event began. I climbed out of the car, glanced around at the parking lot, and announced grandly, “This was a spectacularly bad idea, I shall wait here until it's over.”
I soon realized the only thing worse than going to your high school reunion and being just as invisible there as you were in high school would be going to your high school reunion and hiding in the parking lot, so I went in.
I've learned a lot in the 10 years since high school. I've learned that whoever decided high school was meant to be the best years of my life lied to me, and that the 10 years after graduation go faster than any year of high school ever did.
In Grade 11, I was forced to take a Career and Life Management class and one key assignment was a survey we had to fill out with questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?,” “Where will you be in 10 years?” and “What's the most important thing you will have accomplished in 10 years?”
At 16, it was so easy to fill that survey up with grand statements like “I will be a marine biologist or a Broadway actress, or probably both, with at least three best-selling novels published, one of which will be turned into an Academy Award winning movie, probably starring Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Unfortunately, at the time, I didn't think that in 10 years I'd be where I am now, which isn't half as glamorous as swimming with killer whales while composing the Great Canadian Novel in my head and humming show tunes.
Going to my reunion taught me a few things, though. Some people are married, some people have children. Some have exciting careers and some have travelled the world. Some have joined roller derby teams.
Rather than a competition to see whose life turned out just as they meant it to (I don't think anybody's did), or whose life was even better than they'd imagined, the evening turned into a fun opportunity to catch up, exchange stories, reminisce, and dance to the Backstreet Boys.
The disaster of epic proportions never happened. I wasn't the only one who tried to turn and run at the door. I learned I wasn't the only one who felt invisible in high school, or the only one who has lost a few years since to awkward and embarrassing online gaming addictions. I've also learned I'm not the only one who doesn't feel ready to be 28, or the only one staring at my former classmates saying to myself, “They look exactly the same, only grown ups” and feeling like I was the only one who wasn't a grown up yet.
Maybe it takes 10 years before feeling like I finally fit in, but a lot of things have changed in 10 years. American Idol happened, Google took over the Internet, gay marriage turned legal, and the two towers fell in New York. Ten years ago, September 11 was just another day at the beginning of the school year.
People say you find yourself in high school but they're wrong. In high school, you find who you think you should be. When it's over, that's when you have the freedom to find who you really are, or who you want to be.
I can't even imagine where I will be 10 years from now, but for the first time, I'm a little excited to find out.
Also! The boy I liked all through school remembered my name. Just saying.
