When I left home all the way back in 2003, it triggered a chain of events that led to me largely isolating myself from a lot of elements of my older life. As much as I tried to keep in touch with some old friends online, I know I pulled back, focused on setting up my new life a little earlier than planned, and things sort of took off from there. My life as an independent gay man sort of took precedence, and I let a lot of things sort of get pushed to the back burner. The rise of social media made it even easier to feel like I was still in touch with a lot of old friends even if more direct contact simply wasn't happening. Fast-forward to today, and it has been over 25 years since I graduated from high school, and I took a chance in our class Messenger chat and mentioned I was in town. I honestly wasn't expecting anything, but one thing led to another, and the few guys based in Singapore and I were able to set a coffee appointment.
On the surface, it wasn't anything special. We met up at a coffee shop and got caught up on what each of us was doing and little things like that. Then again, it just felt so good to reconnect with people I spent some very important formative years with. That can seem like a shallow reason to stay in touch since we just ended up in a high school section together. But it's also not that - just one of those things that you had to have experienced to be able to explain. And now we're all so different and yet we're the same, and there's a kind of magic in that. And while I don't expect us to do this every time I'm in town, I am going to do my best to let the guys know regularly whenever I have a trip planned in case there's a chance to hang out again.
This naturally has me thinking about how to find time to reconnect with the guys back in Metro Manila (at least), because today's experience just made me feel like a dick for not reaching out more. I don't know what most guys have been doing since graduation, and I only have a vague idea of who is married, who has kids, and all that fun stuff. I ran into another classmate at the board game expo the prior weekend, but I didn't make the effort to actually talk to him since he seemed busy trying a game with his kids. But I also recognize these are excuses, so I need to stop feeling maybe a little ashamed of reaching out to the guys and just get over whatever my hangups may be.
Clearly, I'm feeling the strong pull of nostalgia as I get older. And this definitely includes wanting to see my high school classmates again.
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