Regrets & Nostalgia

 A thought that's been on my mind a lot lately is, "I'd rather regret not being there, than regret being there."

I have (to me) a pretty big milestone this year; it's my 40th high school reunion, which will take place this weekend. For clarity, I now live 8 hours & two states away from where I grew up. 

I attended my 20th & 30th, but I've been having second thoughts about this year. At first, I felt excited, yet with some trepidation. By this past weekend, it was much trepidation, but very little excitement. Last Saturday night, I made the decision not to go. 

As with most things these days, the decision boils down to the current political climate. At the time of my 30th reunion, Trump had not been elected for the first time. Now, 10 years on, the world has changed, hopefully not irrevocably.

That said, due to social media, I have learned things I didn't need to know about my classmates and others. I've had people I grew up with attack me on Facebook because I disagree with everything about the current occupant of the Oval Office. I've had to unfriend and even block some people from those days to get them to leave me alone. In some cases, people I'd known since kindergarten. 

I was honestly concerned there would be physical confrontations, and that's a shame. 

I held my classmates in a special place in my mind, if not in high regard, heh heh. We went through 6 years of high school together (junior high and high were at the same school), and in some cases, we'd gone from kindergarten to senior year together. We grew up in a small town. 

There are some people that the only reason we're friends is due to nostalgia. Our lives have nothing in common anymore, except where we grew up and went to school. 

Unfortunately, some of them never left the small town, and it shows. Some who did leave have changed, and not for the better. Or maybe it was always there, and we didn't see it because there was no social media. 

There are some people I'll genuinely miss seeing at the reunion, but that regret doesn't outweigh my trepidation for attending. There are some people who aren't attending that I'd really like to see, and that weighed on my decision as well. If it's meant to be that we see each other again, we'll cross paths. On the other hand, I'd rather remember some people as they were prior to 2016, rather than as they are now. 

I wish my classmates and friends from home nothing but peace, prosperity, and happiness. That will never change. But I'm also not going to put myself in a position to be disappointed and regretful of my decision to attend. It's a shame, but it is what it is.