REUNION RUN-ON

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I saw a picture on my phone today of a group of actors or comedians or some other generally famous, recognizable stars from some lost season of something no one really remembers that they starred in together,

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and they’re smiling and sitting in a half empty bar with Aperol spritzes and Negronis and a martini or three looking fabulous, though wrinkled and grey-haired in a way they never looked on television; 

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yet in the picture they’re happy and they’re together and they’re friends, making me think about the friends I once had both in high school and college and how I never went back to either for any of my reunions because, for me, when that moment in my life ended, something severed me from it forever, so now I can’t imagine myself sitting around a table with my old friends drinking Manhattans and draft beers talking about how good things were once, as if we all miss it, 

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which is why I don’t know if it’s because I mentally left those times long before the rest of them did or because we’re all in such different places now because I moved around a lot after and I got married earlier than them and I had kids before all of them and I’ve changed careers a couple of times, meanwhile the rest knew exactly who they were, even back then, and have tried to be that best self since, and I didn’t know who I was back then and I’m still not so sure who I am now, and it feels like still not knowing now is some grievance against me, 

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so all in all, why should any of that matter because it seems like it would have been nice to see them all again and take one of those pictures looking happy, though older, and together once more, even if just for an evening, and maybe I sometimes think I should call them, though not all at once, but just pop into one of their lives for a catchup chat, 

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though, of course, the problem with that is it feels like I’d be imposing myself in some way because they all kept up with each other after school but none of them kept up with me, and part of me knows friendship is a two-way street but it’s always been one-way for me, knowing that if I’m not the one reaching out and preserving the relationship it dies right there on the vine, 

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and then I get frustrated, but mostly sad, that these connections fizzled the way they did because I was able to be myself around those people once, and there’s a version of me, younger and less mature and full of more life back then, that only they have access to in their memories and I can’t access that version of me anymore because it’s locked in their vaults between their ears,

 

leaving me wishing they’d give me back to me so I can see him and recognize him in pictures, but he’s gone because they’re gone, 

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and I won’t ever call or text them, though maybe I might just post a “Happy Birthday” on their timeline, if the apps suggest it on the day of, and if I happen to log in during that specific twenty-four hour window, and if it’s not already too late in the day for it not to seem like I forgot, 

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but I know I probably won’t, and I know I’ll never see them again, and if I do it’ll be on accident, and I’ll be awkward and nonchalant and so will they, and even if I try to be super engaged in the conversation, I’ll most likely just talk about myself the whole time and not realize until after that I was rude and didn’t ask them a single thing about their lives, and I’ll know the whole interaction was a waste for us both and whatever good memory they might have had of me is sullied and ruined forever, 

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so, the memory of me they hold that I wanted to see and clutch for that brief, glimmering second will be tainted and finally killed all the same, and I’ll never see myself again either way, 

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and that makes me frustrated, and also sad, as these things do because I miss me, and though I miss them too, I know that it’s for the selfish reason that, more than anything, I miss myself that I miss them, and I don’t want to but I do, and I know I’ll never see him again because I’ll never see them again,

 

which sucks, but it’s fine, because it makes me happy when I see the celebrities from my favorite shows getting back together for drinks on social media, and knowing that somewhere out there youth and happiness is being preserved for someone is a fine consolation in my own mind as I sit in my office at work, all alone with my thoughts, scrolling my phone, and in a way, the celebrities preserving their youthful happiness preserves those same realities for me as if I had reunited with my own old acquaintances like they did, 

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and there’s hope in that if anything I suppose. 

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