Blast from the past

It's funny that, no matter how much you try to recreate yourself in your adult life, certain people seem to elicit high school patterns of behaviour from you.

I don't know if any of you are from small towns. I grew up in a town of around 10,000 people. Not quite small enough that everyone knew your business, but small enough that a large proportion of people did. Also typical small town in the sense that people are often relegated into two categories: those who left, and those who didn't (although, really, there are various degrees of this). Both feel the right to judge one another. Those who left are considered snobby big city folk, and those who stay are small town hicks who aren't making anything of themselves. I am pretty resistant to that dichotomization. I still remember going back to my sister's high school graduation, and hearing a friend's parent comment on how "big city" I'd become... despite the fact that my "big city" clothes had actually been purchased at a garage sale in this small town!

Myself, I could never stay there post-high school. The notion of working the same job, marrying my high school sweetheart and living down the road from my parents was never right for me. I think leaving my comfort zone was a vital part of growing up, as you take many aspects of life for granted when you are never exposed to something different. I am also aware, without bragging, that I am one of the people from my high school who is considered to have "made it". This actually sometimes makes my return awkward. I'm not too sure what to say to those who have never left. I think sometimes they are more sensitive to being judged for their choices that reality merits. I still feel attached to them and have fun while I'm there, but there sometimes seems to be a bit of a gap between us. I don't think it is just me... they sometimes aren't sure how to react to me. I really like to think that I am still the same person underneath it all. But I think that this town stays more stagnant, sometimes, then any of the people in it.

Some of my friends panic. A close friend of mine, who is now a social worker, had to leave early one holiday because she couldn't reconcile her new life with her return to her old one. The partying and return to her old ways didn't feel like it fit with who she now was.

Wow. I really went in a direction I didn't intend to go with this post. This was all brought about by two things. The first is that one of my best friends is currently visiting, so last night a group us, including another old friend, went for dinner and a movie. The three of us girls had been a really close bunch in high school, and it was amazing how much I could see the two of them regressing into old patterns of interacting that they don't show when they are not around each other. And I found myself being pulled in the same way. While I like the fact that they both know me for who I am underneath everything, and know all my past secrets, I also don't like feeling like I have to return to high school modes of communicating with them. I don't want to feel like I have to compete with one for the other's attention. Aren't we past this now? Can't we reminisce without having to literally return to being 16? So I try to just sit back and watch, and resist these urges.

The second thing is that, on our way to the restaurant, I ran into the mother of an ex-boyfriend from my teenage years (side note- my boyfriend's mothers all seem to love me. They write me letters after our breakups and plot to get us back together). He is a whole another story in and of himself, but he was also my first everything. It was weird to be in the midst of my life, ten years later, and to all the sudden get this odd, out-of-the-blue reminder of my "former" life.

Some people never want to leave, and some people never want to return. I'm in the middle, which makes these two poles difficult to navigate sometimes.