Out of Body Experience

This afternoon it came to me.

For quite some time I had been trying to remember her name. I knew her first name – remembered it fortunately as we met coincidentally at Starbucks some months ago – but I couldn’t call to mind her last name. Clearly, I’ve had other concerns since the time I saw her grabbing coffee in the epicenter of our small town last summer, and so recalling her title was continually pushed back to make way for more pressing life issues. But sitting in my room today (in a spot that seems to be suited well for revelations) it came to me.

I looked her up on Facebook. 24 mutual friends, that’s gotta be her, right? I remembered her mentioning CMU and I saw FHS class of 08, so I clicked the “request friend” button and awaited my confirmation. Upon returning home from dinner, I found an email in my inbox notifying me I had been accepted as a non-preditor, and from there I did what any self-respecting non-preditorial individual would do – I stalked her from a respectful distance.

I read through her activities, interests, and other vitals first. As she cited writing and scrapbooking, and embraced a healthy love for Sex and the City, I found myself smiling. I remembered, I thought, that she was the president of the Student Council, and her mega-watt smile staring back at me seemed to silently confirm. Undying devotion to her darling rebel – her sweetheart with a healthy dose of defiance – seeped out of the page from wall posts and her relationship status.

I recall her most vividly as a Freshman, and from the moment I met her, I adored her. She sparkled with a natural energy, and her mind was as quick and sharp as her smile was charming. She wore a lot of black then as she was tying up the loose ends of a pubescent punk stage, but unlike the other punks she embraced the Stu-Co (student council, yes we thought we were that cool) culture of clean-cut WASPy fun. Still, unlike some of our fair-skinned friends, you could see the depth of her still waters shining brighter than any Tiffany that may have adorned her neck.

I decided then to flip through the photos of her, and as I did I found myself experiencing the strangest feelings of surrealism. She was sandwiched in between groups of girls, or holding signs displaying undying High School pride, or making funny faces in all the local restaurants. The one that really got me was of her in Charlie’s basement. He was a friend of mine – through my own darling rebel – and I would recognize those maroon walls anywhere. His sister, whose elfin figure was a constant source of teasing in my day, was in the picture (playing host) and four other fresh-faced girls held pool cues and were captioned by the words “Its weird to think about what your life would be like if you never met the people who changed it.”

There she was, with her bumper-stickers about love and girls standing on their tiptoes, hair straigh and make-up thick, smile shining with such a beautiful innocence. I’d always liked her partially because I saw so much potential in her youthful self and partially because I saw so much of myself there too. It became even more poignant today as I felt as though I was looking at my former self in pictures of her. Remembering that girl who loved a boy with everything she had because she had everything to give. The girl whose smile sparkled with childish innocence and lit up a room with genuine energy. Whose eyes were bright and hair was blonde and figure was slim and clothes were smart but young.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the past – burying things that have been long gone, and realizing how much, in aging, I need the things that I knew when I was young. Learning the difference between irreconcilable and irrevocable, and how important both of those words are to my existence. Redefining the place of things and people in my life, and realizing how my past life and self fits into the person I am now. Learning to look back at that girl – with the fresh face and bright eyes – and to see how she is, even then, the woman she will someday become.

“Growing up is never easy.  You hold on to things that were.  You wonder what’s to come.  But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be.  Other Days. New Days.  Days to come.  The thing is, we didn’t have to hate eachother for getting older.  We just had to forgive ourselves…for growing up.”  – The Wonder Years

yours.Rachel