A couple of weeks ago I got added to our ten-year high school reunion Facebook Page. Ten years. Has it been that long? For me high school at the start was great, I had the same friends from middle school right there with me. As the years went on, I still had them there, but depression, anxiety and bullying had kicked me in the gut. I turned into the ultimate avoider of that place, lying to my friends and my family and skipping most of my senior year in 2012. As I’m approaching the ten-year mark, I ask myself, why would I go back to a place that caused me so much trouble?
In ten years, I feel like we all have grown a lot. Graduating high school, going to college, finding the person to spend the rest of our lives with, starting a family, those big adult-life milestones. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m years behind the crowd. But then I remind myself, this is your own story, nobody else’s, why should I dictate how my life should be of a person’s Instagram that I went to high school with that has the house, the car and the husband. Who’s to say I won’t have it all someday?
I think the one thing I dread the most about a high school reunion is the people that will just rub it all in your face. We get it, you have it all, some more than most. But are you happy, truly happy in your life? That’s the answer I want to know from a lot of the social media painted pictures from many of them.
The jocks, the geeks, the hicks, the popular kids and your dirty kids. Do the cliques still stay the same after ten years? You would think they wouldn’t, but a part of me has seen coming home during college that some people are still stuck in their ways and stuck in the same small town. With the same groups come the same attitudes and dramas. Some think they are better than others, and some just want to be understood. I look back on how cliques were back in high school, and I wish I never was in one. I wish I was just known as the girl who wanted to be friends with people that were nice to her and gave her a chance.
Though it’s traumatizing to go back to a place that you never really enjoyed, I will go to my ten-year high school reunion. I’ve done, learned and been through so much in these past ten years that my life is just as thrilling or eventful as the ones who have started a family or started their own company. I’m making moves in my life that are things to be proud of, and they are on my terms.
When it comes to where I’m at in this life, I’m at my place, Katelyn’s point. And right now, that point is turning out to be a hardworking and successful chapter, that continues to get better. The important thing is, when your high school reunion comes around the corner, go. See how you’ve grown from the high school you to the adult you. You just might surprise yourself, and others who never even saw you in the light you are in now.