what i remember about my high school graduation – besides the sea of red nylon gowns, and skewed mortarboard caps, the warm afternoon sun raying out from behind the bleachers of the football field, the band launching into an off key “pomp and circumstance” – is this: being surrounded by a circle of friends i would have trusted with my life, embarking on my first love with a boy i’d fancied from afar for years, and the mixed anxiety and excitement of feeling i was the cusp of something indefinably momentous.

that moment was twenty years ago. the adults in your life tell you during high school that it is both the best time of your life, and that it is insignificant when viewed from the lens of everything that comes after. high school commencement serves as a proxy for a coming-of-age ceremony – a demarcation of leaving the shelter of childhood, and gaining societal recognition as an adult. it’s a launching pad into “real life”.

and so as you step across the stage, awkwardly collecting your diploma and shaking hands and trying to face forward smiling for the camera and searching the audience for your family and friends – in that nanosecond before they call the name of the next student… you have arrived.

and for some people, that moment was their peak. there are lots of members of my graduating class who have stayed preserved in that moment like amber – oh, they have nice families and good jobs, and all the trappings of everyday life that we all have. they hold fast to that moment, by living in the same area, seeing the same people, going to the same places, doing the same things. it’s not that there’s anything wrong with any of that – in fact it describes several members of my own family.

but i can’t relate to it, not even a little. i would die a death if i had to live that life – i want nothing of it. for someone as mawkishly sentimental as i am, it’s remarkable that i’ve rarely dwelt upon the foggy memory of my high school era with anything other than fleeting curiosity. in fact, flipping through the facebook profiles of my old classmates, i barely remember any of it at all. those friends that i’d been so close to at graduation, i haven’t spoken to in twenty years. and who are all these other people? did i even go to the same school as everyone else?

if i strain, i can sort of, kind of remember that one golden post-graduation/pre-college summer of friends and first love…and nothing else. after that summer, there was too much real life to be lived to spend time looking back.

so when my ten year anniversary came long, my old friend nathaly dragged me to it, i remember being bewildered even then, at my lack of attachment. after all, at that time i was living in new york, married, with a rich social life and an important job, and i was perplexed by everyone else’s evident nostalgia for their youth. what was so great about high school? we were all adults now – wasn’t that so much better?

my twenty year reunion will be held in my hometown next week. as the trans-atlantic distance is prohibitive, my absence is not unexpected. but i admit, i can’t imagine going even if it were 3 miles away instead of 3,000. i bear only the faintest resemblance to that girl of then (who thought she was a woman). and from what i can glean of people’s lives via the internet, it seems my classmates fall into either that same category themselves, or alternatively, have not changed at all. either way, i doubt we’d have much in common – throw us together for an evening without the rubric of a “reunion” and there are few of them i’d even want to spend time talking to. harsh, but truthful – these people don’t matter to me anymore.

our theme song for our class of 1990 graduation was “don’t you forget about me”, by simple minds. and i know that there are many who emerged from highschool with lifelong friendships, who are eagerly looking forward to getting together, reconnecting and remembering. that’s was never me or my experience – in many ways, my real life after high school was a complete disconnect from what went before, both intentionally and not. perhaps that’s to my detriment, but i can’t imagine why there’s any expectation that twenty years later we’d enjoy getting together.

and ultimately, i did forget – aside from random snippets of memory, there was apparently nothing compelling enough to stay stuck in my brain. i have never longed to return to high school times or relationships, and so upon becoming an adult, with all the real life joys and sorrows that ensuing adulthood entailed, i put it behind me and never looked back. the adults were wrong on that count: it was never the best time of my life – it was simply a time.

so i’ll hang on to my genuine memories, scattered and few though they are, rather than feign ersatz fondness for people and a time so long ago. we’re adults now, with real families and jobs and real joys and sorrows – that’s what keeps me looking forward and fills up my real life. i was indeed, that day, on the cusp of something indefinably momentous, and in the intervening twenty years since i crossed that stage into adulthood, i’m happy to say that everything i’ve done and experienced since, makes my high school girlhood era pale by comparison.

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