Hm…. I just skyped with two of my friends from high school. And somehow, I never knew it or suspected it, but it was just what I needed.

It was just what I needed to feel relief. Like a call from the past, but so sudden—a ringing on my computer at six in the morning.

I think of high school as one of the peak times in my life. It was when everything felt right. Maybe this is because now I’ve perfected high school in my memory, imagining it to be some golden time it never was. Nevertheless, high school was the time in my life when I was confident, felt smart, had friends who knew me like family. It was when I could do whatever I felt like, and I knew that the people around me would understand. It was when I knew people and where they came from and why they were the way they were. It was when people knew me too, and everything I did or said was real. There were no strangers.

So it was good to talk with these two friends I hadn’t really talked to or seen at all for two years, and to see that once we started talking again, things were still the same. It was good to make sure that the person I was in high school wasn’t gone, just hibernating in a place in my mind I’d forgotten how to find. It was good to realize that maybe, nothing had actually changed. That things only seemed different because the way I had been looking at them was different. It was so nostalgic, but so positive in that it wasn’t just me looking back on things alone. 

When you look at things in the past alone, when everyone else has moved on, the memories are stale, and you become the one who’s been left behind, too uncool for the future and too insecure for the present. The air feels a little colder when you realize that everyone but yourself doesn’t care and you’re the only one getting hurt.

But when you look at the past with other people, and go over good memories together, you realize that the way you’ve lived was never in vain, though at times you thought it was. You see that the things you said, the connections you made, and the person you were had a purpose, and all the time that has passed you by is something you don’t have to regret. You’re glad that you are who you are, and your history is something you can be proud of.

Finally, you can be honest with yourself, and admit without shame that you missed them… very, very much.