I was supposed to attend a “kind-of” reunion with my high school alums. No one ever planned our 30th Reunion so I offered to pick up the ball and aim for a 31st, of sorts. Quick turnaround. Not a lot of planning. Low maintenance. I created a post on our Facebook alum website and an event page. A few people offered to help out. It wasn’t long before people were “in”. I was having fun. Then COVID-19 set in and our state received Stay-At-Home orders and that was that. Cancelled. I was sad... and really confused.
I was genuinely motivated to see these people but I didn’t understand why. Let me explain.
They’re good people. It’s not that. I knew lots of kids in our 250 plus graduating class, but surely didn’t hang with that many. I was shocked at the number of people I didn’t recall when they said, “YES” to attending. Some of my inability to remember is due to age, I’m sure. This was the 31st reunion, after all, not the first. It’s been decades since I’ve seen some of these people. And, some of my inability to remember is because we just didn’t socialize. So why this deep-seated desire to make this happen? To be the person to spearhead the gathering? I surprised myself.
With extra time to think about such things (thank you self-isolation) I’ve been contemplating this unusual commitment to engage. At first, and maybe still partly, I decided it was because we’ve lost a few classmates recently. In particular, one of my closest high school friends. Gone in an instant. I wished we had connected before his passing. I couldn’t be there for his funeral. I was out of state. I was heartbroken. Thinking about him brought up a lot of high school memories. It definitely created in me a need to connect to the past. Shortly after he died I reached out to a woman in my high school friend circle and urged a get-together soon. I was clearly pining to relive some old memories. But that wasn’t the whole story.
I think it started when we lost the husband of a classmate. I had offered to provide a gift (a couple of bottles of wine) for a fundraiser for this man’s hospital expenses. In doing so I connected with another classmate. I was giving her the wine since I couldn’t attend the event and she could. I didn’t know her well in high school. She was a familiar face and a nice person. Smart. That was my sense of her, at least. Nice and smart. We met in a cemetery near our high school so I could drop off my gift, which felt very “high school” I might add. Passing bottles of wine in the cemetery where I used to party with friends when we skipped school definitely felt like a full circle moment. Anyway, we spent a good half hour talking about our respective high school experiences. And this… this I believe was the seed of my pending discovery. I was fascinated how differently she saw me back then to the person I thought I was. She was surprised that I didn’t feel as confident as I came across. (Yes, we went this deep in a 30-minute exchange.) I was surprised that she thought I was confident. This thought rolled around in my head for some time after we met.
A few months later, up pops this reunion opportunity. A guy I had gone to high school with, even hung out with some but was never really close with, had made a Facebook post suggesting he wished we’d all get together. I picked up the ball and the posting began. Then the same woman I met for the fundraiser offered to help. We decided to bring a small group together. Not in a cemetery but at a West Side party hall. If you are from Grand Rapids, and specifically the west side of Grand Rapids, then you are keenly aware of the Catholic Party halls, named for saints and in existence seemingly since the dawn of time.
Two other classmates joined us for planning and the same thing happened. One of the two (another woman) described the way she remembered me. I was completely flummoxed. “Wait? You thought I was popular? You thought I had it all together?” That was shocking to hear. I mean, who was that high schooler? I would have loved to have been that high schooler. I should say that I apparently had her all pegged wrong too. At least the way she understood herself.
One week later, as I was posting the notice that we’d have to cancel the reunion due to the virus, it hit me… that’s what this is all about. Drum roll, please. Because this is some A level self-isolation, self-awareness emotional work that lead to Epiphany Number One:
I’m finally becoming the high school person I always wanted to be, always knew I could be, but never tried to be.
What I wanted to be was an accomplished over-achiever, boy appealing girl, class President, getting straight A’s, who would go on to run the world. What I was, however, was an under-achiever with an insatiable appetite for social life, a non-existent boyfriend life, and an underwhelming desire to make decent grades.
And, now maybe another drum roll, because here is self-isolation, self-awareness emotional work Epiphany Number Two:
I have almost always been both of these people. It’s just that sometimes I was/am more one than the other.
In a deeper effort to understand this, I jumped in the way back machine.
For the most part, through age ten, I was a great student. Consistently. Either VG’s or G’s on the report car (Catholic School A’s and B’s.) Featured roles in school plays, winner of the 5th grade spelling contest. I was chosen to both carry the baby Jesus to the altar for midnight mass and crown the May Queen (Mother Mary) on the lawn of Immaculate Heart of Mary School. I mean, Holy Jesus Batman, that’s some quality over-achievement.
Then my parents moved to Alpine Township. At age 11, somewhere between Dickinson Street in the heart of the city to Baumhoff Street in the middle of the country, I started to shift. This two-personality person started to emerge. I started band with a desire to be first chair clarinet and then slowly I’d move on chair over at a time until I sat last. I never practiced. I’d get to my homework after watching “The Brady Bunch” reruns. At age 12, I ran for student government. I talked too much in class and my grades weren’t fantastic, but still, I knew I would be a great leader. My teacher’s thought otherwise. Because I needed six of them to agree that my running was a good thing and I could only get four, I forged two signatures. I believe they call that ballsy... or unethical. I never got caught, but also never got elected. Instant Karma, I suppose. As my grades diminished my social circle grew with popular people. They were the pretty girls, hanging out with the cute boys. As they developed into prettier versions of themselves, I could only see me as developing into a less attractive version of myself.
I recall vividly the day in 7th Grade that Annette M. yelled out, “Teresa Thome has a bra on! Why does Teresa Thome have a bra on?” The whole class laughed. I was mortified. Still, Tom K. kissed me at the 8th grade dance and Mark D. and I went to another. But that wasn’t enough to convince me that I was worthy of affection or worthy of praise. It shouldn’t have been the bar, but it was.
Then, from the depths of all this mind delving, I had another self-isolation, self-awareness epiphany. And this was the big doozy, the dooziest of the doozies… Epiphany Number Three:
I have almost always possessed self-confidence, but I’ve rarely possessed self-esteem.
Mind. Blown. I mean that’s some grown-up therapy I did on myself. Right? In trying to unpack that self-realization, I started with Google.
Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself overall. Self-confidence is how you feel about your abilities and it can vary greatly. Repeatedly I read how people with high self-confidence in certain areas can be seen as someone with high self-esteem in general, although that isn’t necessarily the case. DING. DING. DING. Damn, Google knows me.
I have had a fairly strong self-confidence throughout my life. I started making people laugh when I was six-years-old when I would do impressions of the old women in my grandfather’s nursing home. What I didn’t have was self-esteem. Why? I’m guessing it’s because I was one of the poorest kids in the richest school districts. That I believed myself to be the ugly red-head who hung with all the beauties (reinforced on the regular by neighborhood bullies and horrible boys all through my childhood and young adulthood). Perhaps it was too difficult that while I always got VG’s and A’s someone else always got VG+ and A+’s. And, well, I was certain that my dad loved my friends more than he loved me. There was that. And that's probably the biggest reason.
Regardless if it was any one issue, a combination of them all or just part of my DNA, eventually I gave up. I leaned into the parts of my personality that reflected my self-confidence (friend-making, socializing, performing) and buried the parts that would boost my self-esteem (feeling self-worth, limiting negative self-talk). I know that I have been slowly doing the work to better emotional health my whole life, it's just now, I have a deep understanding of what the work needs to be.
I hope to look back on this time in a few years and see that it was the point in my life where self-isolation lead to self-care. And a time when self-confidence and self-esteem were finally able to express themselves fully in me and at the same time. Now that's a scary thought. I guess I have some more unpacking to do.
