Our 40ish reunion is this coming weekend and so the Facebook group has gotten really active with posting photos again. I wrote about it before here, how it's interesting to get that dejavu you're not part of this crowd feeling again.
But here is the weird thing this time. There have been pictures posted of some other kids. Some of the not in ALL of the pictures kids. And some of them while I'm looking at their faces I'm thinking about how I remember them looking, and it's a little different.
Honestly, I've made them all better looking, which sounds mean, but it really isn't. My memories are from a teenage me looking at other teenagers. Looking at those pictures as a grown ass adult I see a lot of awkward kids. Not all of them, there were a few in our class (and those around us) who were just stunning even back then. But there are quite a few that I think...hunh...when I see the photo.
And then there are the surprises, like rolling through the latest round of pictures and there is a group of five guys, one guy stood out, actually two, but one I knew right away and the other I was like...how do I know you? Put someone else's name to him for a moment then noticed the person standing behind him. The top of his head had been cut off in the picture, see kids when we were younger we had no idea if the shot was actually lined up right or what we had until the film was developed...So anyway it was a neck and a chin and I thought...Oh...now I know who this is.
The neck and chin belonged to my 9th grade boyfriend. Even after all of these years I instantly recognized just that much of him. Then as soon as I had him I had two of the other people in the photo. His best friends. Interesting what your brain files away and what it doesn't.
And of course once I saw that picture and thought of that boyfriend I went down a nostalgia rabbit hole for a moment. It seems weird and really a little too much to think about, but I regret that relationship in an odd way. Not that I didn't like dating him, I did. Not that he wasn't a nice guy, he was. Not that we weren't a good match, we...well.. I was not the person he needed right then. A lot of pressure to put on a 14 year old kid, but I just wasn't the support that he needed at that moment in time. But we had a strong connection, I mean, when Brent and I decided to get married I went and talked to that boy one last time. Just to make sure that I was over him. Brent was a saint to put up with that nonsense. Though he did go with me and waited in the car until I was done. He was a saint, but he wasn't stupid.
We crossed paths again about 10 years later. I was working with a woman who was talking about this guy she and her husband were good friends with. He was going by his full name by then, not the shortened version and I wasn't sure it was him. I asked her to ask him if he remembered a girl he went to high school with, and gave her my maiden name.
She came back into work the next day and punched me in the arm. "You could have warned me! I asked and he said, 'Oh you mean the love of my life? The one that got away? Yeah, I remember her.'"
She did not believe me that I wasn't actually sure he would remember me. That's how surprised I always am when someone remembers me. Like, he was super important to me. And I knew at the time we were dating that I was his life raft in a really bad time. And I knew that his sister HATED me from breaking up with because it wrecked him at a time he was already really vulnerable. But still, ten years later I wasn't sure he'd really remember who I was. Like I would wash right out of his head.
We reconnected for a bit and it...didn't go well. Again, he needed something from me that I couldn't give him. And I'm sure I fucked up his head all over again. Because I was ready for a friendship with someone who knew me when, and...well...he wasn't.
But I still recognized his neck and chin instantly.
And there is still a part of me that thinks now almost 30 years since the last time we saw each other he probably doesn't remember me. Though it's probably more like he wishes he didn't.
And, I will have to be honest, I'm going to write down a lot of notes from what I remember about that time and eventually a lot of it will probably make it into a story, because it really is one of those "what if" things that I like to write about. What if it went a different way? And what the hell was in the water that we were all thinking about permanent relationships at 14-17 years old? I mean, I got engaged to Brent when I was 17 and he was the third person to ask me...
And I wonder if the other two even remember me?
No comments:
Post a Comment