I'm generally not the type of person to wax poetic about days gone by. Nor do I go through old letters,pictures,or other nick knacks from the past. But with all of the chaos that has been surrounding me the last few months, my mind seems to be trying to reach out. Telling me to look to the past,maybe to tell me not to repeat it, or just remind me how things were. Funny how your mind never clearly tells you EXACTLY what it wants. Just gives you strange dreams about past things, strange urges to suddenly look at your dusty yearbook, or a name randomly pops up that you haven't heard in a decade.
I've had bizarre dreams about the old neighborhood, with all the kids that I used to go see and hang out with. Kids that I was friends with from the age of 4 well into senior year of high school. The moment I graduated from high school it was as if I were soooo eager to just let them fall away. Like they didn't matter to me any more. Just people who were there, eh they served a purpose now I gotta move on. Thanks to things like facebook I've been lucky enough to find some of those friends. But there are others that i'm like they are lost to me.
I looked at my yearbook, at first it was as a lark to show my fiance my silly ugly betty sophomore picture. Big glasses, braces, and all. Then I looked at all the signatures. Most were of the most generic ever. "you're cool never change! Have a great summer! See you next fall!" Love John Doe. But I had some moments where I had to hold back my tears. Like I missed these people who I haven't spoken to in over a decade. We were close once, inseparable in many cases. There were some surprises in there as well. Like the absence of certain people who didn't sign my book at all. I would scan all the pages, and I'm like...I was best friends with this person since junior high, and friends even until I went to college but no signature from them for the first two years of High school, that's sad. It made my heart ache. Then I saw a signature that made me both laugh hysterically out loud and bawl into tears at the same time. Because I totally lost touch of this person, and this person was a great friend to me, made my days fun, made the trips on the bus to and from school an adventure. I even had a lil crush on him, almost kissed him too sophomore year while we helped the french teacher clean out her classroom. He was a senior when he signed my book...so I never saw him and his omnipresent black leather jacket(even in summer weather).
Looking at the signatures and the people who said such nice things...Whether genuine or not touched my heart, considering the backgrounds of most of them. I was one of those people who really didn't belong to any one group or clique. I was friends with people who were basically the whole breakfast club. I saw everyone as equals in my book. If you were nice, funny, etc then I didn't care what you were outside of that. I didn't care you were poor, or that you were a "sped", a "techie", a jock, a brain or any of those things. I liked you for who you were inside.
To this day I'm only really close with probably 3 people from high school. Jen, Andrea, and Matt. But even that I really only speak with the girls on a semi regular basis. Now thanks to facebook I talk to some people every so often. It's hard though since I live in Florida and my hometown is in PA. So I guess even being close with the 2 people I am close with is miraculous.
I hope that maybe more and more people from the past come to light and I can reconnect. For now I just hope my mind is now appeased, so now I won't have funky dreams, or urges.
Dedicated to my "lost" friends: Aaron "cactus" Taylor, Mindy Pesky, and Erica Depesquale.
