Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

In less than three weeks I will be spending a weekend visiting my past… at least a version of my past that is. During my public school years I stayed on the outskirts of the social circuit – I wasn’t completely invisible but I was often overlooked. My strongest memories of middle school and high school are filled with angst. I never wanted to be the center of attention but I wanted to be liked. So I helped the popular boys with their schoolwork, I let them cheat off of me on tests all in the attempt to be noticed. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I never learned the life lesson that only in made for TV movies does that work in getting the guy; in reality he’s just happy to have the power over a dork so he can spend his time having fun rather than hitting the books.

When I joined facebook I started looking for people I went to school with and found so many of them from my first high school. It took me a long time to start sending out the friend requests and even now there are those who I want to friend but haven’t yet. I moved at the end of quarter one of my sophomore year of high school – I was a brief blip on the high school radar and was easily forgotten. One day I was there, the next I was gone and by the end of sophomore year I was forgotten about. I was swallowed into the quicksand and life continued as if I had never been there in the first place.

Yet things were different for me – I pined to be back within those walls. Even now a decade after graduating from high school I still wonder how my life would have played out had I not moved. Who would I have developed friendships with, would I have dated anyone, where would I have gone to college, would I have found my calling in life? So many “what ifs?” running through my head that I will never be able to quiet. I know it’s something that I cannot go back in time and change so I need to stop wondering but I can’t help but feel that the train of my life went off the track the day I moved up to New Hampshire.

And now I’m about to embark on a weekend of reconnecting with people – some who I was never friends with when we were classmates or coworkers. I can’t help but feel a slight sense of panic about this – will they like the woman I have become? I have a thousand thoughts screaming through my head – this build up is so much worse than any first date ever could be.

I would love to be like Alice and fall down the rabbit hole back into my past to see what I was like over the years. How did my fellow classmates view me? What did they think about me? As self reflective as I am I’ll never be able to step outside of myself and see myself through other people’s eyes. I know what my friends tell me about myself but I’ve always wondered what people REALLY think about me – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Bottom line is that as the days between now and my road trip the greater my anxiety will become. I’m sure the weekend will be fun but I would love to come out of it with newfound friendships and a stronger connection with those who are part of where home is to me. And perhaps I’ll be able to pull a Sally Fields: “you like me! You really like me!”

I also hope to come out of the weekend with plenty of stories to blog about. Maybe you can go back home after all.