The invitation came three weeks ago, to a twenty-year reunion at a school I left without much ceremony. I've skipped the last two. I told myself both times that I wasn't interested, and both times I checked who was going.
I've checked again this time. Twice.
That's the detail that made me sit down and write this, because a person who genuinely isn't interested doesn't open the guest list. A person who's already run the numbers opens the guest list.
The three things I noticed
- I looked at who'd be there before I decided whether I wanted to go. Which means the guest list is load-bearing, which means this isn't about seeing people I miss. I could see the three people I actually miss any weekend, and I haven't — I've been busy, I've been meaning to, it's been a while.
- I caught myself drafting answers. Not questions — answers. What I'd say about the job, the city, the fact that I'm not married. I had a version prepared, and the version was modest in a way that was designed to be asked about.
- And here's the honest fear, which took a while to say without softening it: I've done fine. Not great. And "fine" is a category I can present confidently to strangers, because strangers don't have a baseline. But these people have a baseline. They knew me when I was going to be something.
What the reading said
I did a reading. The question was the one I'd been treating as trivial: should I go to my reunion?
The reading didn't take it as trivial. It asked: what are you hoping will happen?
And the answer was so specific I was embarrassed: I wanted someone to say you did it. Not in a speech — in an ordinary hallway sentence, from someone who remembered me at seventeen.
Which means I've been carrying a scoreboard for twenty years, and I've been waiting for a verdict from people who aren't keeping score. The people who'd be there mostly think about that school the way I think about my first apartment: fondly, occasionally, without a spreadsheet.
Then the reading went somewhere more useful. It pointed out that the reunion is the one room where I can't be new. All year I've been quietly enjoying being a person nobody has a file on — a city where my history isn't common knowledge, where I get to be whoever I've become. The reunion is the room that hands the file back and asks me to sign it. Which is why I've skipped two.
I wasn't afraid of them. I was afraid of being given back my own old description.
What happened
I went.
It was aggressively ordinary, which is the best possible outcome and the hardest thing to write interestingly. Two people hadn't changed at all and were delighted about it. One had been through something hard and was funny in a new way. My old closest friend and I talked for an hour about absolutely nothing and it was the best conversation I've had all year.
Nobody asked about the job. One person asked if I still played, which I haven't in fifteen years and immediately wanted to again.
And on the drive home I noticed the scoreboard had gone quiet — not because I'd won anything, but because I'd walked into the room and found out it wasn't a competition. It was forty people my age, most of them a bit tired, all of them relieved to be recognized.
Anyway. I spent twenty years assuming there was a verdict waiting in a school gymnasium. There wasn't. There was a table with bad coffee and the person who used to make me laugh so hard I had to leave the room, and I'd nearly skipped it to protect a position I'd invented.
If you're weighing something you've been calling trivial — a reunion, an invitation, a party where they'll all be — and you've caught yourself preparing answers, try a reading. Three numbers. No account. It won't go for you. But it might show you whose verdict you're still waiting for, and whether anyone is actually holding the pen.
FAQ
Q: Should I go to my high school reunion? A: Go if you're curious; skip it if you're auditioning. The tell is whether you've been preparing answers — if you have, the anxiety is about status rather than people, and the curious version of you is the one who has a better time. Also worth knowing: the people you actually want to see can be seen without the event. If you have three people on your mind, invite them to lunch instead. See also: Should I Move Away From My Family for the Relationship? It's Two Thousand Miles. — the same question about the version of you that other people already have on file.
Q: What if I have nothing impressive to show? A: Then you're in the majority, and the fear is calibrated to a standard nobody at the event is applying. The people who organize these things are usually the ones who are sentimental, not the ones who peaked. In my experience the question that actually gets asked is "are you happy?" — and nobody asks it as a test.
Q: How do I handle "what are you doing now"? A: Answer it in one sentence and ask them one back. What makes the question feel like an exam is treating it as a summary of your worth; it's just a way to start talking. If you're feeling brave: "not much worth reporting — what about you?" Honest, disarming, and it moves the conversation to somewhere with actual people in it.
Q: How does a reading help with a decision like this? A: It separates the event from the scoreboard. I thought I was deciding whether an evening was worth a drive. I was actually deciding whether I could walk into a room where everyone already knows who I was at seventeen — and find out I no longer need them to update the file. The reading named the verdict I'd been waiting for, and I went.