...reunited, and it feels so (not) good...

I was an awkward teenager.

Heck, I've been awkward at every stage of life thus far. 

But high school was The Worst.

Sure, I had a friend group...a selective few who tolerated my quirks and character flaws.  But raised in the manner I was, I wasn't built for fitting in or playing well with others.

I didn't have access to the right clothes.
I didn't have access to the right music or entertainment.
I didn't have anything to contribute when it came to the socially accepted norms of typical teenage conversation in the '90s.
I wasn't raised to be a part of my peer group.

My adoptive parents have/had specific ideas and ideals in mind when it came to raising the children they had adopted. And for the most part, barring some puberty-onset defiance by both of us, my adoptive brother and I fell in line.  We knew our place.  We knew our duty.

We followed the rigid guidelines.
And we were both...weird, because of it.
Me, probably more so.

Skirts and dresses instead of jeans. Classical music instead of trending pop stars.  No to parties, and late nights, and mixed-groups. 
No, to seemingly everything that everyone else was doing, wearing, watching and talking about.

So, I was awkward.

~~~

Tonight is Reunion Night. 25 years. 

(That, in and of itself...the 25 year part...is a bitter pill to swallow.  When did I get so oooooold?)

I've watched the FB event fill up with vaguely-familiar faces and names with some sort of dispassionate curiosity. I've seen the notifications as details and comments sporadically populated the page.  I've noted the stats change as interested clicks over to going.
And I haven't for even a moment ever wanted to attend.

High school was The Worst.

I was such a misfit. And boy oh boy, did my classmates know it. 
I went through school with a target on my back.
I was skinny...oh, fine, I was scrawny. 
I was...brown.
I was dressed all wrong, and brought lunch from home, and walked to and from school each day.
I was a music and theatre geek.  A nerd who desperately tried to dumb herself down by not turning in assignments so the other kids would stop calling her nerdy. 

I was a bookworm and a writer (oh, hey...hmmm...)

I was an easy target.

I was shy and quiet and desperately trying to melt into the hallway walls.

I rushed through the teaming cesspool of students, when the bells rang, shoulders hunched and head down...desperate to avoid notice.

I was...unknown to self and others...neurodivergent and utterly incapable of understanding, much less playing the social-construct games of teenage hierarchy.

'90s teenage me:
Yes, that's an oh-so-popular Hypercolor tee, and yes, I had to work hard for it.
And yes, that's my beloved guinea pig, Butterscotch.

So, I was bullied.

No surprise, there.

I was taunted and teased and inappropriately touched. I was shoved and snickered at. My belongings would mysteriously go missing. My long hair was tied to the back of chairs and stuck with discarded gum. The home answering machine would be full of gross jokes and threats when I got home,,,thankfully well before anyone else, with time enough to erase them all.

High school was The Worst.

One of my friends from those way back days, some years later when we were still in friendly touch, used to talk about how excited she was for future reunions and how she couldn't wait to show up and prove them all wrong.

I never quite got that.  Wouldn't the proving be in not caring about their opinion? Wouldn't the evidence of their wrong be in the life you successfully built beyond the boundaries their immature games had defined for you?

More to the point, why would anyone want to Go Back?

Go Backward?

Even for a night...a gathering...a memory re-telling/re-writing?

Why would anyone who'd not been part of the in-crowd ever want to be reminded of how ostracized and unwanted they once were?

Why would anyone want to resurrect those discards of unformed-self, shed like too-small skin once we were free of those hallways?

High school was The Worst.

I've no desire to open that door to the past.

I don't want to try, and fail, to fix that damaged teenage girl.

I don't want to sit with her big feelings and silent tears and hot humiliation.

I don't want to hear their memories of me, or see the confusion of not remembering me at all.

I don't want to listen to the liquor-induced one-upmanship of strangers desperate to impress.

I don't want to prove them wrong.

I don't want who I am now to be compared to who they thought I was then. I don't want the life I've built and the things I've accomplished to be diminished by the constricting constructs of their version of teenage me.

Tonight is Reunion Night. 25 years.

I haven't gone to the other reunions. I won't be there tonight. I can't imagine a future where I might attend one at 30 years or 40 years or...

I was an awkward teenager.

Heck, I've been awkward at every stage of life thus far.

I'm more than capable of self-sabotage and self-deprecation.

I don't need help to make myself feel small and misfit.

I've got that covered.

I don't need to confront my bullies, or wait for their apologies, or listen to their shallow excuses.

I can just say Not Attending.