Looking back

Yes, the one screaming her head off is yours truly.

11 long years have passed since that photo was snapped and I got the hell out of dodge.

(I may have been a little excited about the prospect.)

This past weekend Husband and I went back to my hometown for my mom's birthday. 

I like to joke that it's our annual pilgrimage to the place that spawned me. 

(He really should pay his respects to the town that shaped me into the bundle of crazy he fell in love with, I mean really.)

During our visit I pulled out my senior yearbook because I wanted to locate someone who claimed to have known me in high school. (That is a very long and awkward story) (Because I seem to forget people) (Apparently) After completing my tasks (and easing my guilt over not knowing someone who was a freshmen when I graduated) I started reading back over the things people wrote to me in the aforementioned yearbook.

That's when things got weird. 

I had no clue who most of the people were. These people who wrote long paragraphs about how wonderful I was and how much they'd miss me. The people who had scribbled their phone numbers and begged me to keep in touch.

"Growing up is hard on a friendship. There's no revelation in that." - Ann Brashares (Sisterhood Everlasting)

Until Facebook was invented I had absolutely no idea what my long lost former best friends were up to. (Well apart from what my mom would tell me when she ran into their mothers) (small towns are stifling like that) I'm not one of those people who looks back wistfully on their teen years so it never occurred to me that I should miss these people. I didn't attend my 10 year reunion because I had no desire. (Husband on the other hand was pissed that his class didn't have a reunion) Time is funny like that. The people who meant the world to me and I couldn't imagine not being in my life have faded into vague memories. Or have faded completely.

It's weird. This thing they call growing up.