Old, Up and Just Plain Growing.

My husband got the invitation to his 10th high school reunion, forcing me to realize that mine is just a year away.

I don't know if I want to go.

Two of my friends have attended theirs in this past year. They said it seemed everyone was either a. trying to prove that they haven't changed at all since high school or b. trying to prove that they have changed completely from who they were in high school.

I am not in touch at all with anyone from high school. I have two friends left over from my pre-college years. One from elementary school and one from middle school.

High school wasn't bad for me. It was okay. I spent most of it waiting for important things to happen. Things that would define who I really was (the things that happen in college and beyond).

My friends were a pretty cool bunch of kids. By that I do not mean that we were "cool" in the cliqued sense. We were those kids who were smart without being branded as "nerds", liked without being "popular", quirky and individual without being "weird". We all liked us fine.

I did feel, though, that there was a very large part of me that they never understood. I suppose it was because I was still trying to understand myself. I couldn't expect other people to, least of all people who were preoccupied with growing into their own adult selves.

Things changed around my sophomore year of college. I was working constantly with classes and theater, and pretty much allowed my social life to starve to death. This was particularly tough as I was dating and became engaged to my Beloved. My high school friends blamed my boyfriend for my lack of communication, didn't understand that it was a greater passion that was eating me up. The theater as Mistress, can take more than she gives (there's your icky poetical phrase for the day).

My friends didn't understand. They got really pissed off. They stopped talking to me.

I missed them for a while...and then I didn't anymore. I felt guilty for a while...that ended, too. The last few visits home had felt different. We had less in common, and weren't sure how to deal with that. I got distant, they got angry, but it was organic. We would have drifted apart eventually, that I do know. Hopefully it would have been under more amiable circumstances.

I do wonder how they are. I heard my old boyfriend got married, and that's terrific, because he was such a sweet, supportive guy. I heard one of my best girlfriends went to Africa to study archaeology, and that is awesome. She was always one of the smartest chicks in our class. She had a really cool hippie mom, and a great, sarcastic sense of humor. I did hear, unfortunately, about one girl's unhappy marriage, about another's unhealthy series of relationships. There's one friend I have heard nothing about, but something in my gut tells me she's doing fine. She was always very laid back, very mellow, always herself. She went through high school with a Mona Lisa smile, and the knowledge that she was okay and always would be.

When the invite comes for me, do I really want to go?

I don't think I do. I wish them well, but I don't feel the need for any sort of closure, and to be honest, the rest of the people I went to school with, I don't really care to see.

Huh. I started this post to talk about how old I felt, seeing that invite for the class of 1996.

I don't feel old anymore. Yes, thirty looms ahead, and I have a husband and child, but I don't feel old.

I think I just feel like an adult.

I’m cool with that.