Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion

If you’ve just had your 20th school reunion or, like me, are about to have yours I don’t need to explain my reference to this classic 90s film. In short it tells the tale of all of us in our mid thirties having to confront the horror of a high school reunion, in many cases desperate to show that we have changed. 

We know that 20 years have changed us in ways we just can not comprehend. We have suffered, we have lost, we have confronted demons, we have dealt with trauma, we have grown, we have matured, we have married, divorced, had children, lost children, lost marriages... life has happened. We are inexplicably not remotely like that bolshy eighteen year old leaving the gates of high school proudly proclaiming Destiny’s Child’s ‘I’m a survivor’. Survived what?

But for many of us those teenage years were to be survived. I remember leaving school thinking that one could draw a very definitive line in the sand between those leaving school who had gone through the dreaded existential crisis that Godot warned us about and those who hadn’t. For me my gregarious, show off, insensitive days came to a grinding halt at the end of my grade 11 year where I almost lost my dad and was diagnosed with panic disorder and the subsequent lashings of depression that go hand in hand with anxiety. I came to realize that a lot of my behavior in high school stemmed from my need to control my environment (and my friends) in order to maintain what I realized then was a very delicate balance of anxiety and fear of losing control. 

My matric year was the worst year of my life as the struggle to adjust to my varying medications left me in a zombie like state. The bullying that also came hand in hand as a result of my altered state of consciousness from my, shall I say, less empathetic cohorts (and one particular teacher) left me shattered, lonely and in desperate need to get the hell out of dodge. 

And I know I was certainly not the only one. And I know that , pre grade 11, I was also probably one of those bullies. That’s the thing with teenagers - they are the realest, most ideologically raw people in the world. Every idea thought is the first idea ever . Every heart broken is the first heart broken ever. Every loser who can’t pull themselves together and enjoy the blossoming of youth is weird. In short it is the time when everything happens for the first time. And if you, like me, had to experience mental illness for the first time as a teenager you were in for a bit of a rough time. 

Unfortunately for me the line in the sand is still there. There are still people who I just cannot see beyond a school uniform. They are still very much the people I happily left at the gates of high school. 

But what a hypocrite would I be to not allow them to grow and change? Twenty years is a very long time. I know that not a single girl will be returning to school the girl she was in that sprig (the name for our ghastly floral school dress). 

As one who believes in Christ’s gift of change and renewal this is where I should actually draw my line - no matter who you were at high school if you have allowed your suffering and the challenges of life to create a spirit of hope and renewal and authenticity and love in you then I am in your camp. I don’t care if you were a bully, a withdrawn sideliner, the pretty blond who all the boys loved, the library monitor or the catering rep. I’m for you. 

So despite the fact that in twenty years I have allowed myself to be dragged back to school just once if social distancing allows I will return to my alma mata.  I don’t care about extensions to boarding establishments, and hockey astros and the new music block. I don’t even care if I don’t set foot on campus. But I do care who you have become and I look forward to meeting you... again. Because we are all, after all, survivors.