#NerdsUnite: Nerdy Thoughts on going to your 10 year reunion

Nov 22

T-minus 8 hours until I leave for the airport to head back to my hometown for my 10 year high school reunion.

I have so many mixed thoughts on the process.

High school, for me, was horrible. I was bullied by my peers and then legit stalked by my 4 best friends.

When I was 16, I vividly remember sitting at this super long table with my dad, his buddy (our lead attorney), and the stalker's lawyers going over the stipulations in the protective order.

300 yards, it states. If you know Jennifer Friel is at a location you must immediately remove yourself.

Normally, for a protective order it expires however, and my father wanted to make sure I would be able to go to all of my high school reunions.

You never know where the girls will be 10 years from now, one of the attorneys protested.

I remember my dad laughing (my dad is an attorney, and a DAMN good one), and saying - my daughter graduated high school. Did you ask your clients if they did? They have NO right to be at any reunions in the future.

What ended up happening?

I got the lifetime protective order from all 4 of the girls. (1 of them did graduate btw. She was the only one and she bowed out of everything pretty early choosing to just sign that she would stay away from me for literally the rest of my life.)

Tomorrow, and all this weekend really, isn't even about doing the whole "look at me now" thing. I very frankly couldn't give a flying fuck. This moment, and this experience is for the 16 year old that genuinely thought she was going to die on a daily basis because of these people. I allowed myself to live in this CONSTANT state of fear. Now, I'm not afraid.

BITCH PLEASE!!! I took a BRICK to my head this year and lived to tell the tale. There is nothing in this world that scares me anymore, let alone anything that could occur in my hometown.

I feel an enormous amount of empathy for them though in my process to try to understand what could make 17 year olds snap like that. Again, I played my part, but NONE of that experience was normal.

As far as everyone else goes, I'm just game to party, man. I'm pretty stoked to kick it with the people and not the projections I placed on them as a child.

There's a really big part of me that just wants to put on my big girl pants and get this shit over with.

I have no family in West Hartford anymore, so this is genuinely my last time back. Such a big chapter closing.

My only question is, why does this make me feel so sad?