Nostalgia

Since reading "Mr Goodblood's" book (see post of Dec. 14th), I've been thinking a lot about the past. About High School. I pulled out my scrapbook and looked at the signed programmes and posters from the plays I was in. I ever looked at the yearbooks. And I've been thinking about getting in touch with one or two of my old school friends. We used to get together about once a year at Christmas, but the last time we did that was...25 years ago? I dunno. And though I've seen and/or heard from one or another at one time or another, we haven't all been together since.

The thing is, I'm not sure getting in touch would be a good thing. Is it a healthy impulse or am I trying to return to a dysfunctional culture? Could be either. We had many good times and we were there for one another and understood one another in ways that no one else did. But we were also mean and petty and judgmental and elitist. At one time, one of us said about me, "Last spring everyone wanted to be Kele's best friend." And from the way she said it, I knew that I had somehow caused it and it was so wrong of me: that I had...taken something from her by that being the case. now I just think, "And what predcisely was wrong with that? Get over it." On the other hand there was a thing that was special to another of us that I pretty much took over and told her to put her interest elsewhere. And I feel bad about that.

Also there's the fact that the one old school friend I've had most to do with--she lives down the street from me as a matter of fact--turned out to be so toxic and so unwilling to work on her issues and so willing to blame everyone else that my therapist insisted I get out of the relationship.

One called herself Cassandra, but she was more like Julius Caesar in that she kept saying that no one should be a leader but she obviously wanted to be the leader herself, or at least first among equals, and resented anyone else who seemed likely to take that spot. There was another who was most comfortable as a sycophant but reveled in the pretension that she knew more than everyone about anything. Her motto should have been, "There is nothing more satisfying than correcting one's superiors." Those two made a great team, and they were best friends for a long time. I think no one took Libby seriously though we should have and as for Stephanie....I just don't know. We were close and then we weren't and then she hated me and then she didn't.

There was just so much going on. We all had so many troubles of our own to be truly supportive of one another, but we kept limping along because there was no one else. I think of them now and I will never forget them because they are the people on all the earth who know me as I was them and as I truly am.