Realization #598393 that you're older than you feel:

You go to your high school's website. First, you goggle that they've got a website. Then you happen to read through the faculty list and you realize that one of your high school classmates is now teaching there.

Then it dawns on me that the classmate in question—Joshua Harrison—is one I haven't seen in seven years.

Seven years.

Seven years since I moved away. It seems so quick for me, but I know that everyone else in that class has had the same seven years to move on with their lives, as well. Most of them have probably married, settled into their lives, started having children. Since I have not seen most of those people (all 33 of them) since graduation night, my mental image of them is frozen as they were then.

I have trouble picturing some of them married. As parents. As adults. I have no doubts in my mind that they probably picture me the same way—ugh.

I was awful back then. (For those that think the same of me now, go read something more productive!) I had a huge chip on my shoulder, didn't know the difference between what I wanted and what others expected of me, and really didn't have much of a personality. When I graduated, I had no idea whatsoever of the kind of person I was—or that I wanted to be.

Some people bloom when they get to college. I was one of those people. When I think about it—which isn't often anymore—I sometimes wish I could go back and apologize to a lot of people for everything I didn't know. But it's easier to forget when the people in question are ones that you see only once or twice in a decade.

Maybe I'll go back for my ten-year reunion. I always said I would. I don't think there was a five-year reunion, and if there was, I wasn't invited. My classmates could find me online, but they'll be more likely to contact my parents and forward messages through them.

It reminds me of a dream that I've had many times since I was a child—that my life was, literally, passing before me so fast that I could not take it all in. Each time I blinked my eyes, the entire situation had changed; the people around me were so much older that I barely had enough time to recognize them again before my drying eyes needed to blink again.

I have this urge to stop blinking for fear of what I'll see next.