Perfect Circle

Recently a friend posted pictures online from about a decade ago, among which were pictures of a trip a group of us took to a friend’s cottage.  This friend’s cottage was a semi-frequent site of cottage parties during my high school years and early twenties, a place to swim, sun, drink, play cards, and sit around a campfire singing REM songs at the top of your lungs once the sun went down (because we were supermen, and we knew what was happening). It was the site of gatherings big and small – sometimes it was a full-on rager of a party, other times just a few of us, or even just the two of us.  The fun sometimes got out of hand –it was a place where anything could happen, a place to drive cars into ditches, tip canoes and float on their backs, have furtive hook-ups that everyone knew about (you thought you were so sneaky, didn’t you?) wander in the woods, and laugh your ass off about all of it.  We were reckless, but the laughter was worth it.  The cast of characters usually shifted slightly with each trip, but the core group stayed much the same over several years, for these cottage parties and other get-togethers.  Many of these people have fallen out of the picture for me, but I think of them, and these times, now and then. 

Seeing these pictures were a powerful reminder of how young and stupid I once was.  I’m probably still stupid, but I’m much, much older now.  I like to think that I had my shit together as much as the next person, and I navigated my teens and twenties without making any colossal, life-altering mistakes, but I made more than my share of small, heartbreaking ones.  I don’t miss not being nice to friends who deserved better, brushing off boys who probably would have made great boyfriends (teenage girls suck, don’t they?), liking boys and them not liking me back, feeling left out when I didn’t get a phone call for a party or night out, wondering if my outfit/hair/attitude was cool enough – the usual, messy stuff that seems so important at the time and happens to all of us.   And in all that mess there were people who I’m still friends with to this day, that I keep in regular contact with and share major life events with, and even those that I haven’t seen in years and years but who, if I saw them on the street, I would greet with a gigantic grin, because it would be so very good to see them, to see how they turned out.  I’ve changed so much, but I’m still the same girl.  I’d love to know how their lives turned out, after all that mess, all the drama and fun and heartbreak and excitement that happen to you as you are becoming fully-formed, before you really, truly know who you are.

Are there things you are nostalgic about?  Anyone you wonder about?  And – here’s what I really want to know – what were your teens and early twenties like for you?

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