So many thoughts going through my head…

Saw some friends from high school. My cousin was part of a production of Little Shop of Horrors.  We had a mini-reunion from the “original” cast… saw some people I hadn’t seen in… oh, a decade or more.  I had a few favorite teachers who attended.  It was beautiful.  We were all adults, equals… on the same playing field.  I still have their graying faces in my head, knowing that Way Back When, I might’ve been the cause of at least a few of those grays…

High school was a long time ago.  It was a different world from now.  In fact, I keep saying how only a year ago was a different world for me, but to look back– really look back over the last half of my life, I’m realizing just how far I’ve come… I heard one of my former classmates– now a teacher at the school– say, “I told the kids to come back at…” I laughed because he referred to them as kids. He wondered what I expected him to call them.  They were kids, after all.   

I hear myself, sitting on the porch, watching the neighborhood teens terrorize the block.  I shake my head, “Fuckin kids,” I say.  They are kids.  They are teenagers.  They are the ones who I was ten years ago. 

Jeez, I thought I knew so much.  In many ways, I did.  I was different from the other kids.  I knew how to take care of myself.  Somewhat by choice, mostly it was due to necessity.  But I was young and inexperienced.  I didn’t know how to behave socially… I didn’t know how to work through certain things… I didn’t necessarily have a good understanding of real right from wrong… I was independent, thought I knew everything… I figured it all out, though, at least. 

I’ve been very aware of myself all this time.  I have been aware of my challenges and aware of how I feel.  I am often amazed at how well I turned out.  I could’ve turned out very, very badly.  Instead, though, I refused to let circumstances shape me.  I was always good at bucking the system.  It’s that very tenacity that preserved me.  Maybe I lost my innocence in the adventures I’ve had, but I never lost my tight grasp on the idea that I was going to be the best me I could be, regardless of what I had to work with. 

This attitude mostly kept me out of trouble.

Growing into an adult is a puzzle.  We have nearly all of the pieces we need, and then, as we walk along these paths, we find new pieces to add into ourselves.  Sometimes those pieces we find fit.  Sometimes they don’t, and even if we try to force them into place, we eventually have to toss them away– probably so some other chap can find the piece, pick it up, and try to incorporate it into them self. 

I can’t believe how much has changed. 

I’m still a bit mystified about my own current circumstances– and with the holidays coming up, I’m excited, nervous, and downright giddy.  I’ve taken on my own family.  This will be the first year I’m spending with my family.  Suddenly, I have a ”new” family to bring into my “original” family.  And my original family is welcoming this change with wide open arms.  Of course they are, I knew they would. Just had to find the right person to make a family with!

I took my new family with me to visit the family I made when I participated in the original Little Shop.  It was an evening that felt specially designed just for me; I had my “original family” and my “new” family to enjoy it with.  My aunt and uncle, my cousins, my grandparents… my close friends from high school… my significant other, my children… it’s a lot to take in with only one gulp.  We laughed together at the comedy, sang in our heads along with the music, jumped at the pseudo-gunfire, and giggled over the confetti stuck in our hair from the finale.  I couldn’t have picked a better experience– it was awesome!

 I know I’m not unique in these experiences.  Everyone has to go through something like this at one point or another.  I’m glad I had the opportunity to reflect on it all.  Sometimes it takes just a little glimpse of the past to put the present into perspective.  I’m sure happy that I looked.  Everything was in place, in order… I feel really good about it.

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