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For illustrative purposes only. This wasn’t my school.
No, I’ve never attended any of my high school reunions and I never will.
Let me explain.
I was homeschooled from preschool through grade 3 and had excellent experiences with that for the most part.
In grades 4 and 5, I attended a wonderfully friendly little school in the western portion of the United States. Had I stayed there, maybe things would have turned out differently.
The summer before I began grade 6, we moved cross-country to a rural part of the midwest because a church there hired my dad as their new pastor. Most of my classmates had been together since kindergarten, if not much earlier in life, and at best the majority of them were not at all interested in welcoming new kids into the fold.
I was bullied for years, mostly emotionally although there were a few minor physical altercations as well. In retrospect, these experiences caused severe depression and social anxiety. Yes, I made a few friends along the way, but no one I kept up with after graduation.
One thing that kept me going was the thought that someday I would never again be legally required to interact with any of the people who made my life miserable for so many years.
My final year of high school only included two classes on campus which was a massive relief. The rest of the time, I was joyfully taking courses at a local college for free thanks for a dual enrolment program my school offered.
I was confused by classmates who grieved the end of high school. Their experiences were nothing at all like mine.
For me, those years are something I will revisit in the rare blog post but that is all.
I forgive those classmates and genuinely hope they’ve become kind and accepting adults, but I never developed the deep emotional connection to that chapter of my life that I’d need in order to be willing to travel internationally and spend a substantial sum of money just to attend a class reunion. The window of opportunity for that closed many years ago. No thank you.
Title: The Neighbourhood Squirrel