by Susan Kmita

Created on: February 09, 2010

You spend your early twenties escaping…your thirties child raising and now in your mid forties…precisely forty five years young (yes, I know denial rears its ugly head as menopause lays waiting to attack) it catches up and you are faced with the inevitable high school reunion.

What to do…what to do?  Living miles away, the obvious is clear. Hop on a plane for the weekend and make a grand entrance. But grandeur has never been my style ... I decide a road trip allows for reflection. After all, how does one simply zoom into their past without considerable thought?

Smiling at my worldly knowledge, I decide….a road trip it is. I vision miles of flat highway swallowed up by the blue endless sky…the irony is not lost and I begin to sense my journey although well traveled has lacked in direction.

Indulging my appetite to reflect the trip to the past, I decide to add a dash of adventure. I could hop a freight train heading back in time…I’m absorbed with excitement. There I arrive to a stunned crowd revealing my unique profession…a mature hobo that comes with years of experience but no references.

No, it has to be realistic I chide myself. Hazily lost in thought, it dawns on me. I could hitchhike to the reunion. Smoke a few joints … I bet I could hallucinate myself right back into my teens forgoing any aged instincts I may have learned over the years.

Strobe lights of reality snap me back to my life sentence, “45 year old divorcee with two children”. The word divorcee repeatedly blinks with judgment.

Suddenly feeling like an onion peeled to its core, I am left in tears, chopped, sliced and diced emotionally.

What happened to the perfect life? Am I about to discover I failed the final exam? Has my life been a series of pink slips marked absent? Was I late for the class when opportunity was handed out?

Overcoming the urge to hyperventilate, I recognize the symptoms. The diagnosis is not surprisingly funny…reunion jitters have paralyzed me with fear.

Self medicating, I breathe deeply to control the anxiety. I seize the moment of strength and tentatively book my flight to my high school reunion, no fuss, no drama, fly in and fly out....simple.

I tell myself I'm no longer who I was and I no longer know who I am so really nothing has changed. But the right side of my brain counters, if life is good from far, it is far from good close up.

Nonsense…easily removed by sipping

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