Measuring up to the ghosts of the past...

Today I ran into a ghost from my past. Someone that I went to elementary school with. We used to be friends actually. Really good friends for a couple of years when our age added together still made us too young to vote.

Our names were very similar, perhaps that is what drew us together. Though I can never be sure, we were always so very different. She was tall, I was tiny. She was loud, I was not. She masked her insecurities with lots of antics and I did my best to please. Perhaps it was because we were misfits that we became friends. We did what little girls did back then, we played with our Barbies in secret because what respectable 8 or 9 year old still plays with those things, we went to the beach and body surfed the waves before we ever knew about Jaws and being afraid of the water, we played dress up and make believe games and giggles about who knows what for hours on end. We gabbed on the phone until I was yelled at to stop tying up the line, it was years before my Dad would get call waiting and he was constantly mad that I was glued to the phone. I would sometimes be allowed to go to apartment after school for a couple of hours, but that was seldom as I was not really permitted to be out of my Father's supervision outside of school until after I moved out of the house altogether. (That and my Dad had a great distaste for anyone who did not live as we did, which was not like anyone else outside of my family that I knew of, at least not in America...)

As we grew older, we grew apart. We graduated from elementary school and went to different junior highs. I was the biggest nerd in school, having been mistaken for someone's little brother on the first day of classes, and she went on to be the wild child. She opted for drugs and parties and adventures, and I started dancing and performing in earnest taking starvation and control to a whole new level. Each of us had our secrets, but we no longer shared them with one another. We could no longer relate. Our friendship could not last beyond the childhood innocence and matching Halloween costumes that my Mother made for us one year.

We ran into each other every few years, each with a certainty of knowing one another before, but never referencing the past. She was too cool, I was too quiet. We did a stint in summer school one year in high school. I was taking US History to make room for my dance classes during the regular year and she was in the same class, sitting in the back with the rest of those that were too cool to attend class for nine months straight. I was singled out for being so bright and not belonging with the rest of the students, she was singled out for being a troublemaker. And that was how our lives went. She covered herself in blacker eyeliner and pink hair dye, I starved myself away like the master I had become. Both of us had only one thing in common, we could take on the world, we would succeed, but on our terms. We had backbone and determination.

And that is how it has been. Every few years, I seem to run into her unexpectedly. And we look one another up and down and move on. Our lives have no space for one another. We are too different. We are too shy to move past the awkward hello. We are too different. Even when we are the same, both spiraling out of control, like the time we ran into each other at the County Fair in out early 20's, we are still to different. Once I heard her say to her friends; "too pretty, too perfect" to her friends as they walked away, but she never knew the truth. Just as I will never really know hers.

Today, more than 25 years later, I ran into her again. At Costco. I was stopping by for a last frozen yogurt before I say goodbye to sugar (yet again) for good. She was on a break from working in the food court. She laughed, and I looked over. Our eyes met, and she recognized me as quickly as I her. Her name tag was an un-necessary conformation of identity. We did the usual up and down scanning appraisal and I smiled and walked away. We are beyond anything more now. You see, for all the differences and distance, our lives have turned out fairly similar in a way. Perhaps it is just due to being of a certain age, but in that instant it was very obvious that at least in that moment, we are both happy and healthy and normal. (Whatever normal is...) No more haunted looks behind our eyes, no skinny, starving, tweaker bodies hiding behind clothes, no masks of perfection or imperfection to hide behind, just two real people. And that was nice.

Of course I did the mental stock of how I must have looked, running about in the middle of my errands, my hair in a ponytail, makeup slightly worn,and flushed from the heat... I think I looked okay, good even. But it was more than that. I was walking tall, with my head up and eyes meeting the world right on. I am no longer as shy and reserved as I once was, I have the courage to push past my momentary uncomfortability in new places and environments. I know what it is that I knew so long ago as a small child wearing a matching poodle skirt for the Halloween carnival with her friend... I know that I can do it all, I can rise up to any challenge that life tosses my way, I can succeed...