First of all, I just want to give a quick shout out to all those who either gave me grilling advice or sent me some yummy grill recipes last week – I appreciate it!! I tried one of the new recipes this week and I’ll give myself a B+. I hope to just keep getting better! 

Anyway, I’m gonna get a little vulnerable this week. Something I’ve done before in my blog, but I like to warn you before I get going. It’s your chance to back out! 

So, long story short, I ended up going to my 10 year high school reunion last weekend. For those of you who know me well, know I didn’t like high school – at all. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back. 

But there I was at my reunion anyway. 

Being surrounded by people I used to go to school with brought me right back to those days, and I’m not going to lie, I felt just as small and invisible as I did back then. 

I didn’t really have a lot of friends in high school. I had the people I swam with – thank God for them! But other than that, I was kind of a loner. I didn’t really fit in with anyone else. I was a little too weird for half of them, and not weird enough for the other half. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. 

There’s a lot of things I could dive into about the reunion and being in high school, but the one I want to focus on is how I view my life now versus how it was back then. 

There were probably a million different reasons why I didn’t have many friends in high school, and while I don’t know how much, I do in my heart believe at least part of the reason was because people simply didn’t like me. 

But I can’t really blame them, because I didn’t really like myself either. How could I expect others to like me if I couldn’t even do it myself? 

Back then, I was angry all the time. I had no self confidence. I didn’t know how to talk to people or how to relate to them. I was incredibly anxious and depressed and would overthink everything to death. Whether I meant to or not, I withdrew myself and quit trying to make new friends. People saw that. And I’m sure they didn’t see it as someone who was struggling, they saw it as me kind of being a bitch. So in hindsight, I shouldn’t be that surprised I didn’t have a lot of friends. 

Now I won’t go into a lot of detail – I’ve already done so on other blogs – but eventually I went to therapy and got on medication and worked on my issues. I worked hard on myself and I feel like by the time I was a senior in high school, I was really starting to turn things around.

Unfortunately for me, the damage had already been done. I’d already painted a pretty good picture of what I was like to everyone else and there wasn’t enough time to reverse it before graduation. 

So, when high school was over, I got the heck out of here. I went to a whole new place halfway across the country where I didn’t know a single person and I created a brand new Megan. I came out of my shell and I really started to live my life. 

Now, ten years later, I don’t feel so bad living in the same town I once hated so much. I’m a different person than I was then. I’m happy, and a heck of a lot more confident in myself. I finally know how to connect with people and I know my own worth. I know I have a life worth living and the people I have in it now are a really big part of that. 

So if I took anything away from going to that reunion, it’s that my high school days are in the past and that’s where they’re going to stay. I’m not that person anymore and I have no desire to feel that way again. I’m proud of how much I’ve grown and how much self discovery I’ve experienced. 

With that being said, however, I also don’t feel like I have to prove to anyone that I’m a different person now. The people I went to school with can still see me as whoever they want to and I’m okay with that. I know I’m a different person. The people in my life now know who I really am as a person, and that’s all that matters to me. The rest of it can stay in the past where it belongs. 

I also want to say to anyone who may find themselves in the same shoes as high school Megan, or knows someone who is, that’s there’s no shame in getting help if you need it. And life truly gets one thousand percent better after high school. I can promise you that. 

I’ll get off my soap box now. Hope everyone has a fabulous Father’s Day weekend and gets to spend time with family. 

Until next time! 🙂 

Megan Reiffenberger