I got an invitation to my high school reunion today.

[Bronco69]

I graduated from high school in 1979. When graduation day came I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and I would never have to see those people again. You see, I was one of the few gay people in my small town school. Every day brought a new round of threats, being called every derogatory name you can think of, and generally being intimidated so bad that it was a challenge every day just to get through my classes. After graduation I found out that a few other people were gay as well, but I guess they didn't say anything because since I was the one who was being singled out it took the focus off of them. My high school days were pure hell plain and simple. I moved to get away from them and I have never regretted it. Well, today I received an invitation to my 25th high school reunion. After all of this time I thought I had successfully avoided them, but somehow they found me. I'm sitting here feeling like crap because all of those stupid memories came flooding back. I feel like sending their invitation back with a simple F**K ALL OF YOU written on it, but I'll probably just end up throwing it away. Sorry about the rant, but I just had to make myself feel a little better.

[bluestateguy]

1. Send it back and ask to be removed from their list

Say you don't want to hear about any reunions in the future because of the way you were treated in high school.

[Bronco69]

5. That's a pretty good idea.

I might just do that.

[redowl]

2. what is it about HS days that sticks with ya?

Amazing to me too, the memories that seem so fresh and are years and years ago......bam! there they are again.

so on reunion nite...go party with your current friends!

I should talk- I just wrote to my first HS sweetheart after not having contact for about 30 years.

HAHA
live and learn?
if we're lucky.

[gratuitous]

3. A suggestion . . .

I can't begin to fathom what sort of painful memories the invitation dredged up, but consider that in the intervening 25 years, it's just possible that some of your small town classmates have grown. A little bit. I don't counsel going back, heart on your sleeve, and leave yourself wide open for another round of soul-shattering attacks.

But make some inquiries. Ask around and find out if time hasn't changed one or two minds and attitudes. If it sounds like they're the same narrow-minded, provincial village of idiots, then by all means trash the invitation. But at least check into it a little. Grant grace the chance to have worked in the lives of others. It won't atone for past hurts and injustices, but it may be the vehicle to get you away from the feelings that clearly still haunt you all these years later.

Good luck, Bronco.

[Blue-Jay]

4. You should go.

Bring a date, and make out with him in the middle of the room all night long. Then ask the wife of a former tormentor if she'd be "into" a 3-way.

Shove it in their disgusting faces for a while.

Either that or just stay home and revel in the fact that you beat them. You did, ya know. You came out of the ordeal relatively well-adjusted (I think), and that means that they LOST.

I went to my 10 year reunion a while back. God knows why. I just sat around with one of my friends, thinking to myself "Yep. I STILL hate most of you rotten motherfuckers."

[Lexingtonian]

6. Let 'em live

A lot of those people will be pretty humbled by Real Life(tm) at this point and a good number will be pretty apologetic about how they treated you. The worst will still be bigots- but some number of them will have been incarcerated- yet living grinds most people down.

In a sense we all never leave high school- it was where all the initial status/class/ability sorting out took place for everyone, which was brutal and impersonal (really) and all about the accidents of birth and raising. No one really gets over that trauma of finding out that you are not what you hope you are, that you have to build your identity on a foundation you may never like or go to the trouble of destroying it an pouring a new one and thus falling behind on the rat race.

A lot depends on the dignity, anger, grace, and peaceableness you discover you can bring with you. This will always be the society you came from, by proxy. But your life as you made it is given to another set of people, to other measures. You live to an eternal order now, to Covenants rather than their neediness-driven behaviors of Back Then that reflected their own miserable adolescence and family lives. And don't forget that at your age most of the people there will know something of the shadow and maybe the sound of the footsteps of the Grim Reaper.

The real reason people go to high school reunions is to admit to the few that you loved that you were in love with them then. How ever vaguely. And the tacit expectation that everyone brings to a hometown reunion is that someone who sprang the coop brings back the bauble of importance- some kind of news or lived life that gives the rest reason for hope for a future better than what they have found theirs to be.

At least that's my experience, and my h.s. life was full of disgusting hostilities and vile people lashing out on measure with yours. (I went across very sensitive ethnic lines in my romantic life and wouldn't debase or compromise myself enough to join in any clique, those were the crimes I was convicted of.)

Take care and good luck....