The boy I was is someone born out of the environment I lived in and through. The man I am now is a character I've grown into after the methodical murder of all the negative habits I've had to drop to survive the world outside my town.
I've been giving a lot of thought to the 10-year reunion that’s being hosted at a local bar for my alma mater. There's no one I'd be looking forward to seeing. I'm being dragged there by a friend, someone who is outwardly confident and sociable. She seemingly has no enemies while I'm certain that many people will think negatively of my presence.
Will people still expect me to be that class clown they once knew?
I'm heavier than I was then. I've mentally and cosmetically changed a lot since I was 18. Will I fall further into that role if I were to attend? There is a single question that I can't shake that continues to come up whenever I think about my time in high school. Was I well known because I was easy to laugh at or because I was a pleasure to laugh with?
I'm no longer that child who was so starving for attention that I'd feign confidence to speak to new people to make them laugh.
These types of people-pleasing habits are the ones I have spent a lot of time trying to strip myself of. The holes where these habits once were had been plugged with self-preserving ideas. I've killed that old version of myself and become a version that no longer seeks the gratification of others using self-deprecation which I survived with not too long ago.
On the flipside, I think about the people that will be attending. I know I've come across other peers from school who have told me that I was a highlight of their high school career. I have given a lot of thought to that. I can only name around 2-3 people that have had that kind of impact, and it makes me wonder if they're lying to me. Are they just trying to make me feel good? Have I mattered a lot to people that I wasn't paying attention to?
If I do attend, I would want to be invisible. I would want to hide behind others to shield myself from the familiar strangers I once knew. If I were to ditch, my absence would be a self-preservation tactic but the idea of never knowing would gnaw away at me. I haven't completed my thoughts on all this, and I don't think I will until the reunion is over.
Sep 15, 2026