In my early 20s, a friendship dissolved. My bitterness lingered for years. Too long. In my late twentiess, I encountered that person again. They were different. I was different. Life had happened to both of us – we’d lived in different parts of the country, pursued different things, and boomeranged back for different reasons. They’d changed enough that it felt like the person I was mad at didn’t fully exist anymore. The person who was mad at them didn’t fully exist anymore either. Our new versions weren’t about to be friends; we still didn’t suit each other. But it felt like I was holding a grudge against a ghost. All of what it was was a piece of my history that wasn’t relevant any more. It was done. It became easier to let go of the bitterness. Everyone, and everything changes.

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is about surviving a hypercapitalist, fascist dystopia. It is also about the founder of a religion, “Earthseed”. Every chapter opens with a quote from the main character, Lauren Olamina, as published in her religious text. (Someone has compiled it here, calling it The Book of the Living, arguing the religion is now in practice. It seems L. Ron Hubbard doesn’t have exclusive claim to the fiction-to-faith pipeline. I suppose it’s also true that every religion was started by someone.) God is change, she argues. You can shape that change, and God, through the decisions you make. And humanity’s destination is for the stars, which is out of scope for this essay. The Book of the Living is sufficiently relatable that it shows up sometimes as part of inspirational memes as Eckert Tolle does. The book series itself? Easily one of the most disturbing I’ve read.

The dystopia was too relatable but it was the religion in the book resonated, particularly for a fictitious faith. Everything does change. We shape life, and are shaped by life. That is how it works. We have an essence that makes us more than vessels of memories, but we are not static. Part of my practice of grace is letting people be who they are, letting people change, and forgiveness.

When murmurings in the Facebook group of my high school class started asking if we were going to do a 20 year high school reunion, I initially looked forward to it. I didn’t think too hard about it – it sounded fun. The ten year reunion was held somewhere expensive and it seemed this time around, folks learned. This one seemed doable: more informal, the kids are easier to watch, sure. But when the date landed, it was the weekend of a milestone wedding anniversary for Will and I (15 years!), my plans for my kids fell through, and home repair projects acquired a new urgency. It was not to be. I spent the day with my favorite people, who happen to be the ones I live with in.

I accepted that reluctantly, after some denial. “Well, what if I…” kept running through my head. I considered making a day trip out for it – like I’d leave Buffalo just to go there, and drive back. But it’s a long drive for a sober person to go to a bar. The house still needs to be fixed. We just adopted a pair of cats who are still getting used to the house. My family does appreciate my presence.

The more I thought about it, the more I was enveloped by a shadow of dread. I was not going back to high school, an experience that I would not welcome. The invitation to re-find the people was an invitation to dwell in the memories of it. Uh. About that…

The people I was very close to? I kept in touch and that’s been a joy. They are all over the country and when we can see each other, we do. They largely did not reply to the Facebook invite.

Acquaintances that I liked? No need for gossip when you have Facebook to show you the smiling pictures of weddings, kids, and promotions.

Everyone else? I barely knew them then. My graduating class was something like 680 people. There was a strong risk that I’d show up to a room of strangers. Sometimes that was the experience of the high school cafeteria.

I was more OK with walking into a room full of now-unfamiliar people than I was of the converse: no one knows me. I walk in, and everyone expects the person they knew or heard rumors about 20 years ago.

That we are change is one of the graces of my life – we can do better and become better. I expect most folks are like this, but I prefer who I am now to who I was younger. Older me is more level, joyful, and funny. Teenage me was, dreadfully, a teenager, and kind of cringe by current standards. I brooded and wore black. Like, a lot of black. Think every single day. I’m entirely the wrong complexion for that.

It was also a reunion of a time of life that I’ve mostly forgotten. There’s a strong risk that people remember things about me or that I was involved with that I’ve forgotten about myself. Oh, no. I don’t spend a lot of my life on Memory Lane (a real place not far from where I grew up!) out of both disinclination and a lousy memory. I’m not a 12 step gal, but I don’t think I could do step 8 where you make a list of everyone you’ve wronged because I don’t trust myself to remember enough of it. (Did I wrong you? I’m genuinely sorry, and there’s a chance I also don’t remember.) I see the kids’ baby photos and don’t remember taking them. It’s a whole thing. A bad memory feels like losing part of yourself, and that bits of you are out there, existing only in other people’s head. (I hope they are good…!)

Something, something, radical self-acceptance. I suppose this could have been an opportunity for the flawed adult version of me to make peace with the flawed version of my youthful self and make some new friends of those who inhabit old friends’ bodies. But you know? Spiritual growth will have to wait another day. The house still needed to be fixed. I sincerely hope my former classmates had a wonderful time.

Everything is change. We are changed by our ways of existing in all of this. Things will happen when they do. We will do as we do. We will change. Life goes. The past does not come back.