confessions of a nonlinearmind

My 15-year high school reunion

I’m thinking about going to my 15-year high school reunion next Friday, which is a pretty big deal. Not because it would be great to “have the gang all back together” or “see what happened to all my old high school friends”. I could care less, to be honest.

Since graduation, I really haven’t spoken a word to anyone other than my high school/college girlfriend, and even we haven’t spoken in over 12 years. I was a bit of an outcast in high school, self-conscious and awkward and unable to make new friends easily because of it.

I had plans to go to my 10 year reunion. My beautiful blonde girlfriend and I had it on my calendar. I freely admit that I looked forward to showing her off and boasting about how I owned a successful film and video production company and so on and so forth. Even then, I was still uncomfortable with being in a social situation alone with strangers, so I wouldn’t have been able to go to that reunion on my own without her.

I never did get to go. I broke my neck nearly 4 months earlier and, over the months that followed, would lose everything that, at that time, seems to constitute who I was. She left, the business fell apart, and friends slowly peeled away after I moved in with my parents five hours away.

So here I am, five years later, still trying to put pieces back together and now I’m a different kind of outcast than I was in high school. I have yet to figure out why I have the urge to go; I’m not a masochist. It just feels like something I should try to do, not because I remember anyone or even have wondered what everyone is up to. It just seems like a challenge.

Maybe I’m curious as to how people will react when they see me, which is funny because I really hate having to recap over and over. If only I could get on the PA system right at the outset and explain to people why I’m in a wheelchair, and that I don’t need any sympathy unless there’s a free drink in it for me (which does often happen to me).

Right now I’m surprisingly calm about all prospect of showing up, but I’ll probably be scared shitless this time next week. I’ll try to blog my thought processes as the day approaches. I’m just hoping it’s cool like Grosse Pointe Blank.