Bowel clenching terror and canapes

Getting ready for my high school reunion last weekend, my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t put my mascara on. I stress ate all the left-over spring rolls from the previous evening and felt sick. I couldn’t sit still and spent the day pacing restlessly between my computer and the couch. And when I walked into the surf club function room that night, it was all I could do not to turn around and walk straight out again. 

The three girls with whom I had a particularly unpleasant falling-out after high school were the first people I saw. And instead of acknowledging me, they turned their backs and walked away. OK, so I wasn’t expecting a tearful, joyful reunion. But I was hoping that there might have been some small degree reconciliation. Many years ago I fucked up and did something horrible that caused a lot of pain. I have never expected things to go back as they were. I have never expected to be forgiven. I was just hoping that, eight years after the fact, we might have been able to be civil to each other. I wanted to know how they are, what they’re doing. I hope they’re happy, because I sure as hell am.* 

But instead I got the cold shoulder, and when I forced myself into conversation with two of them, got abrupt responses that did not invite further conversation.

So that was that. 

However, I did catch up with lots of other people (all of whom, as it happens, were surprised and apparently quite pleased to see me – ‘where have you been!’ they cried. ‘You know the whole situation with X? Yeah, that’ I responded. ‘Really? What the fuck is up with that? Wasn’t that a million years ago?’ they asked, in some bewilderment. Yes. Yes it was a million years ago), and generally had a lovely time. I got extremely drunk, but I don't think I made too much of a tit of myself.

I nearly didn’t go, but I’m glad I did. I suppose that, in addition to genuinely wanting to catch up with some of the people there, what I was looking for was some reassurance that not everyone I went to school with hated me. My departure from that circle was so abrupt and so final (again, my fault), that I never knew how other people had reacted, and it has pained me for a long time to think that there were people out there who remembered me with distaste.

As it happens, there are far fewer people who hate me than I’d thought, and most people don't even  remember the events that caused my precipitous departure. And it occurs to me that if some people are still holding a grudge after all this time, well, maybe that's on them. It's not as if I have let that whole situation dictate my life for the past ten years - I've been busy with a few other things - but I do feel as if I’ve got some (sorry about this) closure on this now. I don’t especially care if I don’t see most of those people again until the twenty year reunion, but it is nice to have made a certain kind of peace with an especially fraught time in my life.

*Occasional trips to the sad and scary land of Depression Narnia notwithstanding