10 Years Later

Last night I ran across my yearbook from my senior year of high school, and I spent a good half hour sifting through all the pages and reliving what turned out to be my glory days. Maybe that's not right; but if they weren't my glory days they sure were close to it. It's funny-- in high school I wasn't happy and just kept waiting for my life to actually begin. Now I look back and realize it was already in full swing and I just didn't know it.

I also realized something else: I was actually pretty in high school. I looked at all those pictures and saw beauty I had never noticed before. Even now, I can't recognize beauty in myself (if I looked in the mirror right now I would probably groan and look away, because all I would see are the dark circles under my eyes and the worry wrinkles, not to mention the gray hairs). It must have been there all along in high school, a beauty of youth and expectancy, something you lose over the 10 years after you finish high school. And I envy my high-school self for that. Especially since I never once thought I was pretty back then. I guess I always looked for the validation from other people, and when I didn't get it I just assumed it was because I was ugly.

This is the year of my high-school reunion. Will it happen? I don't know. We had a five-year reunion, but that was when our reunion planner had only one small child. Now she has three, and unless she's a super-mom I doubt she'll have time to take on planning our reunion. I think about high school a lot, and I often miss many of my classmates. But I also wonder if it would be counterproductive for me to go back there again. It's been a decade, and none of us are the same people we were back then. Even if we do reunite for an evening, it will never be the same. We will never be as young or as innocent as we were. Life has made sure of that.