So, I hardly ever look back at my high school class, nor my UCLA class, nor even much at Cornell. High school and UCLA were pretty painful for me, and probably for those around me, as well. Even after UCLA, well, I don't keep track of many of my friends at all.
But today I decided to look some of them up on Facebook. What was so weird was how many of them still kept in touch with each other. Or at least know about each other. This isn't a queer thing, though queer is part of it. I say I haven't changed much, almost as a reassurance to myself that somewhere in here there is a constant--but yeah. I've changed a whole bunch. I often feel that the first three decades of my life were played under different rules, by a different thingness.
I know the whole queer thing can be a bitch, and a big reason for making a clean break with my past. But it's not just that. I don't even know so many of these people. You mean we actually hung out in the same sphere? Really?
It seems many of the friends I made were made as someone else, and perhaps I ignored those people who could have been my friends now. It's not a trans thing...I just had no clue who I was. I remember always being scared and never in on the joke.
I am trying a little bit harder to see if there aren't more friends from the past with whom I can reconnect, because I lost a huge part of me back there (I think). Going to Cornell to visit was wonderful, and hearing a friend's voice on TV was neat--yes, she still articulates the same way.
But I just never fit in back then, and what I did to fake it was damaging to me and to so many around me.
