Just to feel the air move across my face They say it's easy But when you're broke, it don't come easily

In a couple of weeks, my graduating high school class will be holding a 20 year reunion. 

I will not be attending.

There are a multitude of reasons as to why I decided not to go. I don't have an trepidation about seeing people I haven't seen in 20 years because of how I look or because I don't think my achievements aren't enough. I am not in competition with anyone. There are certainly people I do not want to see and I am not going to pretend that wasn't a hugely deciding factor. I also just....don't have the same nostalgia the way other people do. 

I was almost warming up to the idea of being nostalgic....until I saw a group photo and I was sitting right next to someone who a few years later would attempt to r*pe me.

I also know that since my biological father died a couple of months ago, I am less eager to come face to face with the people who had at one time asked if my father  was "Injun Joe."

I decided to not relive this, and to just let this part of my life just be gone.

 It was also a time of my life where I was not happy. I do not look back on those halcyon days of yore with any nostalgia. It was a miserable time to be alive. It was cruel and terrifying and sad. I was so very sick from my disordered eating. There were no jobs. Going to college seemed pointless (even though I went and did extremely well). It all just seems so far behind me, why would I want to revisit Bad Memory Lane?

These are only a small handful of academic awards I received over the course of my education. I was always up against the worst. I always had to work harder than everyone else for considerably less. I have always worked so hard and pushed myself to the limits of my capabilities for a fraction of what everyone else had. I don't want to remember that.

I don't want to remember how sick I was.

I don't want to remember that my grandfather didn't get to be there.

I just want to be where I am now.

It's crazy to think that it's been 20 years since I graduated from high school. I just remember everyone being all worked up over things I knew weren't going to matter not even a few month from then.  I guess when you grow up with real problems, all that other stuff seems so insignificant. 

Graduating high school was a huge achievement for me, because I wasn't even supposed to live. I had failed to be a statistic, and thus thrust into a world I had to continue to live in. 

When I was younger, I felt as though I was way more nostalgic than I am now. Now I rarely look back on the past with any degree of fondness. Now I just want to live in the now.

I think if there is a time period I am nostalgic for, it would be shortly after I graduated. It would be the Fall of 2005, when I sat in my first college class, which was a math class at 8am and thinking, "wow, I am really here and in college."  Despite all the ups and downs (of which there were very many), there was just something about  Fall 2005 to the January of 2008 that still resonates with me. There was a freedom in that time. Life before my first cell phone in 2006 will always be something I look back on with a lot of fondness. Life from 2005 to 2008 was all about Kate Bush. It was all about hanging out with my friends at the time. It was all about music. It was all about being silly and going to the movies. It was all about pooling our limited funds together to buy a cd so we could all share it. It was about getting sandwiches. It was about watching all my friends play the new Kingdom Hearts. There was such a freedom and a lightness--even though the world itself was all together pretty terrible and heavy. It's also strange to look back on, because I am friends with almost none of the people I hung out with in those days. Another era better left behind.

Although I wish I could listen to Hounds of Love and Welcome To the Black Parade for the first time all over again.

So, lol, no, I will not be going to my 20 year high school reunion.