More Ghosts

I got a note on Facebook today from a friend from high school telling me they missed me at the reunion.

Reunion?  I didn't even know they were having one.  You know the phrase "Ignorance is bliss?"  Yes I was happily living in blissful ignorance, and wish I still was because spending even a millisecond thinking about high school is enough to give me the need to pop a Valium.

Ugh, high school.  Excuse me while I wave my arms wildly saying, "get it away!!!!!!"  I don't want to think about it, I don't even want to get near that little hole in the ground town for all the tea in China! Just thinking about it and I feel dirty and mentally soiled.  Just EWWWWWW.

Sad part was, the note came from one of my best high school pals.  That made me give a little 'damn it' because she'd be the ONE person I would want to see out of that whole plethora of folks who just could fall off the earth and I wouldn't give a damn.  Sad really.  One can never have enough friends, but as the old saying goes, "in our lifetime, we have as many real friends as we can count on one hand."  It's the truth.  The friend that sent me the message was one of my real friends.  They were actually one of the few people that didn't make my life a living hell day in and day out.  I should really thank her for that.  She was supportive, kind and most of all, she was a pal that in retrospect, I should have spent more time with.

But, fun parts are never lacking when we're revisiting memories of high school...ok, if you didn't get the dripping sarcasm, you don't know me.

Yes, attached to my high school friend's page were the photos from the event!  Oh yes, I live to look at photos of people I could give shit one about.  But, being as I am a glutton for punishment, I looked and saw that for a few of them, definitely not all of them, time has been fairly kind.  What I was actually the most thrilled at were the girls who removed their heads from their backsides and got out of that hell-hole town.  One gal, who looks amazing, lives in New York City.  I wrote her and told her, "NYC, I'm proud of you."  Now while I'm not an East Coast gal, I'll give ANYONE who grew up in that little piss-ant town props for making it their mission in life to get out of it and move to the big city.   I hope my NYC pal is up to her armpits in Prada and fine men.  I couldn't be more tickled to see someone else who had the common sense to realize the world is a pretty big place and that life does not revolve around a town of 36,000 people.

Now, remember the "dialed the wrong number and talked for an hour" story I wrote about some months ago?  Well, sure enough, on the page of photos was the girl that my high school boyfriend was meaning to call but got me instead...yeah, she's married now...still though, um, how to put this nicely...there is someone for everyone.  I get points on that one for not being too overly catty.

Otherwise than that, you know what I came away with?  The fact that most of the folks I went to school with are still the same exact people.  Most have outsides that match their childhood insides, the ugly becoming uglier and the few who were really sweet, became more beautiful.  But overall, I saw people with beer.  Lots and lots of beer, which gave me the overall impression that they were sloppy drunks back then and they still are.

Knowing that, I realized that there is some nutritional value to take out of all of it.  Yes, I may have been abandoned by my husband, yes, I may live alone, but through all of it, I've been my own best friend and my own worst enemy.  I have not had the horrible folks from high school impose their ideals on me nor torment me going through it all. The only time I deal with them is when I'm going through a bad patch of PTSD, their taunts and abuse only last so long until I get through it and realize where I am again.  Bonus of it all, I haven't had a major episode related to my PTSD in a while now.  I have little episodes now and again, but they're short, maybe five or ten minutes here and there, nothing like the two hour plus episodes of the past.  This is a good thing, it's a sign that I've moved on and maybe I might be lucky enough to have had my brain heal a little bit.

But like all ghosts, there are some good and some bad.  Today's ghost is like the one that stood over my parent's bed long ago in the house I grew up in, you just knew it was there to protect and watch over you.

So, to my friend who we'll call Casper the Friendly Ghost...thanks for the note.  Glad to know I was missed, but at the same time, glad I didn't go.  Come on out to Vegas, we'll have a little reunion all of our own.