perspective

 so, our class is organizing a 10 year anniversary meetup.

at first, i absolutely disregarded the notification. who cares? i was always above caring about all these people.

but then, the memories - the good, the bad, the embarrassing - started coming back to me. whatever happened with the barely 18 girl who hooked up with a teacher? and with the snobby idiots? should i want to see these people? am i cool and nonchalant, or is it a sad testament to my broken soul that i do not wish to follow up with these folks?

and, just as i started thinking about a good reason to go or an even better one to decline, my brain just gave up on it. don't go, it decided, we haven't amounted to anything. it's been 10 years and you've gained how many kilos of fat again? some of these classmates had gotten married, given birth, started on their dream carreers, while you dropped out of college, gotten fat, kept the superiority complex and don't even have a one night stand to show for it. it reminded me of how i used to think i was not only different but better than all of them, just disregarded, forgotten, too depressed to do anything.

and while for a brief but well documented time, i did almost get everything together - by now it has all disappeared from my hands.

in a world where i swore not to define myself by my job title, iq, weight or insta followers - suddenly i am doing all of that. maybe i should just skip this one since i don't care about them anyway. or maybe in the couple weeks until then, i should get a kickstart on all my projects! maybe i should move, maybe i should hire some escort to act as my partner, maybe i should do a crash diet to drop as much weight as possible before, and damn the after.

who would that benefit?

why is it that when we take a happy but messy 10 years and decide to assign it an end and a debriefing, all the happiness is vanity and all the messiness is failure?

i am not alone in my negative spiral. my good, long time friend would also have her class meetup this year. she isn't married either, no kids, still rents, and when she reminds herself that her classmates stayed in the small village they grew up in, married idiots, bore kids and bought houses - suddenly her entire academic career feels like a waste of time. we accept that we cannot build a family and a career at the same time, and yet we torture ourselves when the less prioritized projects bring lesser results.

so now i could think - maybe some of my classmates feel the same way. but i cannot imagine that all of them would, if this were the casez the tradition itself would not exist! what's in it for them?

and, to be perfectly honest, i still cannot convince myself to want to go. i do not care about these people, we have spent more time apart than toether, the only interesting thing i could bring to this table would be if i showed up with our class plant. we never had a community, no common story to tell, just a mosaic with better and more poorly adjusted pieces. some of us shone brighter and some were more jaggedy, rough around the edges, and no one managed to create an actual full picture of us. we never really supported each other, the one situation where we did, went nowhere, aspects that we should find traumatizing were treated as jokes among each other.

and while i go on and on about how all of us were flawed, i am practically unable to come to terms with how un-exceptional i am, personally. the entire situation is focusing my mind on this, and apart from the little nucleus of self hatred, i am unable to actually consider it. 

why do i have to prove my worth to people who don't matter to me?

for years, we all were measured against each other. daily. not uncommon. this event is forcing that perspective onto my mind again.