Old Flames

I don't even know where to start.

Back in 1980-81 I attended Otterbein College.  It was my first time away from home and I was completely unsupervised.  I pretty much screwed up the whole year.  I went from being at the top of my high school class to flunking out of college the first year.  A year later I was married and pregnant and living in North Carolina.

I learned a lot of things at Otterbein, few of them academic. First,

never sign up for Calculus at 8am.  Second, there are better ways of spending $30k than getting drunk and sleeping around.  I also learned that you can make lifelong friends in really short times.  Then there are other things-like the prestige of having "rung the bell tower", farts can be lighted with a Bic, and the school radio station is a great make-out spot.

Take for instance my friend Susan.  We were in the same dorm, the same sorority and the same party spots.  Fast forward a million years and we reconnected on Facebook and find we are even better friends.

I also rediscovered friendships with Fred, Jeff, and Chris although I sometimes forget I know them from those days.  They are three of the best musicians I've ever come across.  They are also really good people.  Today's friendship request though...now that's a game changer.

I have a few old boyfriends on my friends list over at FB.  Kevin and Sam mostly.  No secret stuff, everybody is happily married, but it's nice to reminisce sometimes.  It's also great to see grand kids!  Several months ago I was thinking about my time at Otterbein and reached out to someone I remembered very well.  I sent a private message asking if he was at Otterbein in 1980.  It sat in his "Message Request" folder for a long time and frankly I had forgotten about it.

Today he responded and I am over the moon-but not for reasons you might think.

I had the biggest crush on Van.  If stalking had been criminal back then I would be totally guilty.  We hooked up, but never dated and never really got to know each other.  He was a year ahead of me and had the most outrageous sense of humor.  Smart too, which is something I've always been attracted to.  Alas, it was not to be.  Probably a good thing.  My life would have been very much different.

Hearing from him brought back a lot of awesome memories.  Jonda

House.  Blitzkreig.  Main Hall.  Other things.  It also healed something I didn't know was still damaged.  All my life, I have lived in fear of being forgotten.  This is probably why I have always done things on a grand scale-and not all of them good!  There is lots of evidence that I won't be forgotten, even by people I don't know well and who aren't in my life anymore, but I still had this nagging thing in the back of my mind.  Would people I remembered also remember me?

He says he does.  I'm allowing myself to believe that because of the many people I no longer have contact with, he's someone I truly wish I had treated differently.  As he said, we were young.

In that moment, when I read those words, I stopped worrying about being forgotten.  I have nothing to prove anymore.  That doesn't mean I'm done being outrageous, just that I no longer NEED to be.  I have a thousand stories and his is a brief one, all things considered.  Those stories are enough.  *I* am enough.  I got this.

Hand in hand with that is forgiving myself.  I've carried a lot of guilt about my life back then.  I was not respectful to myself or others in any way.  I made mistakes that hurt me (and lots of others) very deeply, and for a long time.  No more.  As he said, we were young.

Both of us are grandparents now, and enjoying trading photos of our babies.  I look forward to actually getting to know him.  He seems like a wonderful person.