TEN

Next year is my high school's 10 year reunion.  May something something of 2002 I walked in what would become graduation1 of 4 and I had not a single clue what the next ten years would hold in store for me. What WOULD the next ten years hold?

• falling in love for the first time...with the wrong guy...
• losing friends
• car accident/getting behind in college
• New Hampshire
• Tennessee
• making new friends
• Sorority Drama #1
• making more friends
• 21st birthday mystery/job interview
• 1633
• Bye Bye Dad...the burning of grilled cheese
• 2007
• making more friends
• old friends taper off
• weddings weddings weddings
• owning up to the elle word
• Graduation 2 of 4
• Nashville
• waking up in closets
• Jenn+Kev+Alston+Alex
• the great roommate toss
• back to Atlanta
• What is a +1
• Deeds
• SDC
• Naia
• Sandtray therapy
• there's suicide then there's suicide
• Maggie and Nathan
• California? California!
• Graduation 3 of 4
• The great fund raiser
• A life of Natasha Beddingfield songs
• No sunrises just sunsets

And here we are to present.  And as I think about all the things that have happened I really have to say, that's been one hell of a decade!  I feel like I've been from the bottom to the top twice and I'm still in my twenties.  I talked to Jewels about going back and I can't decide how I feel about it. Am I excited? Am I nervous? Am I over it?

I think I'm all of those things depending on what time of day you ask me.  Right this moment  I think it would be fun to see people and to hear what they're up to (taking, of course, it all with a grain of salt) and see what everyone is doing these days.

Then again...I am Southern and going back to a small town in which a collection of degrees is far less impressive than a collection of dependents.

 Are you single?

Are you dating?

When are you going to get married?

When are you going to have children?

You're getting another  degree?

Are you ever going to be out of school?

Are you moving back?

Perhaps I would do well to get used to the questions before the time comes? As a preparation for what will surely come once I'm back in the company of my former bandmates, cheerleaders, musical buddies, and track peeps.  A friend of mine joked on twitter and said since she wasn't taking a husband or a ring back, she needed to have a flat stomach.  I entertained the same idea thinking how smashing I could be by next summer, but I realized something very key...in ten years this is the happiest I've ever been.

So I do not feel the need to kill myself in the gym or skip dessert in favor of impressing my old classmates with my jeans size.  I will face them as I am, the happiest Jess they've ever known.  That is...if I even decide to go.