Who Will Be Left at the High School Reunion?
Sometimes it feels like I am a spectator in some sadistic game show where people are crushed to nothingness. I watch as people, just outside of my orbit, break away, and drift off into space, pulverized by the forces around them.
People are dying.
People are dying and we find out through posts on social media with the caption, “Damn, we lost another one,” or “This shit got another one,” or “At least you’re finally without pain.”
I find out about the deaths of former classmates as I brush my teeth or tie my shoes, checking my phone, reading the posts, and retracing the steps from me to them. A friend of a friend, the kid in English class, that one girl who just seemed to disappear one day.
Every week it seems there’s a new one. Someone else breaks away, pulverized, “the shit got another one”. The words are never explicitly said, what’s worse, they’re assumed. It’s assumed that if a classmate passed away it was likely the same reason, the same methods, the same causes.
Today that shit got another one. Someone just outside of my orbit. Someone who I remember always being kind, and friendly, who had a beautiful smile and the bluest eyes you’d ever see. Someone who I’ve seen post the same things about other friends. You’d think you’d learn from other peoples’ mistakes, right? But it’s not a lesson to be learned, it’s an accumulation of pain and pressure. It’s the pulverization as life piles on.
When life gets hard it’s a whole lot easier for it to keep getting harder than it is to get easier. I tell my students that we are all on a river and the flow of our river is often determined by our circumstances in life, some people have smooth rivers, gentle bends, and they can lay back and go with the flow and know that life will be ok. But sometimes our rivers run through mountains, and the rapids are dangerous as we are swung and jerked from bank to bank. Sometimes the hands we’re dealt in life make it that if we just laid back and went with the flow, we would only continue falling down a mountain river, falling through rocky waterfalls and cliffs. For those people, I tell them, they have to work really hard to paddle against the flow of the river. I tell them, it’s possible to get out, it’s possible to change course, and find a better river, but you have to do a hell of a lot of work to get there.
Sometimes the pain and the pressure have piled and the river runs rapid down the mountain and you have paddled and paddled upstream to try to make it out, and you are tired and you are broken down — it becomes so easy to just stop and let the river carry you away. Paddling upstream is difficult, and sometimes, when you’re alone, it’s nearly impossible.
This phrase has kept repeating in my head all day: Who will be left at the high school reunion?
We missed our ten year reunion due to Covid, it would’ve been in 2020, but at this rate, what about 15 year, what about 20? Who’ll be left?
Do most reunions carry an in memoriam section? How long will ours be? Will I be compelled to wear black?
I’m not here to wax political about the scourge of the opioid epidemic, mental health crisis, or anything like that, I’m here to ask: How did we get here? And how do we get out?
I have no solutions, I’m just tired of watching people drift away. I’m tired of watching the posts rolling in declaring the power of “the shit” that keeps spreading. I feel like I’m standing by, a spectator, while my generation seemingly disappears. And it’s true that sometimes I feel like I’m being weighed down and pulverized, and pried away, drifting off to space, and sometimes I feel like I’m paddling frantically upstream, but I also know that I’m lucky that I’m not paddling upstream alone, and I know how rare that is.
And I hate how rare that is.
No one warned us about how lonely adulthood would be. How hard it is to make friends, or keep old ones, how hard it is to balance responsibilities with the things that make the responsibilities worthwhile. We were warned about drugs, but not about the harshness of reality, it’s no wonder so many people have tried to escape it. It’s no wonder “the shit” has become so infectious.
How do we fix this imbalance?
How do we keep reality from becoming something we need to escape from?