Just a Saturday night with the high school crowd
I went to my high school reunion, and I don’t know yet if it was a mistake.
My ex ex boyfriend V was there. When I went downstairs, he was at the bar, and I didn’t see him. But then, he’d always made pretty clear everyone he was never, ever going to the reunion, so I thought I would be fine. But as soon as I got there, my friend W, who, as I mentioned, wrote fan fic in high school and once slept with this guy, pulled me aside and informed me that not only was he here, but so was his new girlfriend.
“Don’t panic,” she said, and that was all I could do. She started whispering to me about how this new girl wasn’t even pretty, how terrible she looked, how terrible he looked, how he wasn’t losing weight like he keeps telling facebook.
We gave each other a wide berth the entire night. I kept one eye on him so that I could avoid him, and I assume he was also avoiding me, but maybe not. I may just not even have registered, I just don’t know.
The reunion itself was... awkward? I think I regressed, but it’s hard not to when surrounded by former classmates. And I’m... not shy, exactly, but not always great with people who matter, and I went to the reunion because on some level these people do matter to me. And high school me wasn’t always great at talking to people, so I sort of clammed up, although at least now I drink and that helped.
I spent a long while talking to a friend I haven’t seen in a good five years, who lives less than ten minutes from me. I didn’t mean to glom on to her, but I was just so busy being panicked about talking to people that this was best I could do. She’s married, her husband was super bored by the whole thing but made a valiant effort to care. I talked to a kid I once kicked in elementary school while he was passed out (but he moved in and pulled focus from me, so I felt justified) who told me he was shocked I’d never played video games because he “thought I was a real nerd in high school” which, thanks, and also sort of, but not entirely. I talked to a guy about our freshman year English teacher, a severe German who woman who hated everyone. A cheerleader I hadn’t talked to since the seventh grade was actually pretty sweet now.
At one point, I remembered my locker number and then proceeded to tell people about that, which, stop that.
I do wish I’d made more of an effort to talk to people, and I’m sort of disappointed in myself that I didn’t, but V’s appearance really threw me.
Later in the night, I saw my friend W, who reported that V came up to her and accused her of avoiding him, said some dick-ish things, and then told her that, essentially, since starting to see the girl in the jean jacket, he was having the best summer of his life.
“I’m going to throw up,” I told her, and she hugged me, while I eyed my glass and wondered if I was going to throw up more than this glass. Then I looked around for larger glasses to throw up in, and finally realized I had to hightail it to bathroom immediately. “Come with me,” I told her, and she did, because we’ve been friends since we were fourteen and I couldn’t throw up in front of everyone.
So I became the girl who threw up at the reunion, albeit in the bathroom, and I can’t even say I was drunk. I’d had three screwdrivers, which is not in any way enough to get me drunk. At least my ex was gone by then, but, thing is
The thing is that I was happy before we started dating. I was single, and I was busy and fun and beloved by my friends. And then we dated and I was still happy. And then we broke up and I’ve turned into this sad little person who cries on the way home from her high school reunion and I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t know how to turn off this stupid hopeful part of me that thinks there’s some way that it’ll work, which it won’t and I’m an idiot for hoping so. And I haven’t taken a breakup this hard since I was nineteen, and I literally lack the skillset necessary for this.
And everyone’s been really nice about this, really nice, which almost makes it worse, because talking about it makes me feel like the world’s biggest jerk because I should just be over it like everyone wants for me. And I’m not and it sucks.