20th…Come and Gone

I wanted to attend my 20th high school reunion.
It’s taken 20 years to get over myself enough that attending felt like a healing, restorative thing.
I had planned on being there. I had circled the date in my day planner. I even looked up flights. But then the week of it approached and it became obvious that we would be on the road traveling in the middle of Kansas the night of the reunion. I wouldn’t get to attend.
I was so sorry that I couldn’t go. I looked hard at the photographs that people from high school posted on Facebook the day after the reunion. I knew those faces like an old pair of jeans.   Most of them I haven’t seen in 20 years, but yet their smiles, their noses, their eyes were so familiar.
I was sorry that I didn’t get to hug old friends. And more sorry that I didn’t get to make new ones with familiar strangers. I wanted to apologize to certain people. I wanted to say I was such a jerk in high school. Because I mean it now. I know I was. I was stuck up and sassy to the point of exclusion. I wanted to hug old boyfriends and laugh. And tell each other, you still look great. And I wanted to feel really young again with the people who share my same memories.
I hated missing that reunion.
I realize now that it’s true. So much of life is just showing up.
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