Everything and Nothing Has Changed

The week leading up to my weekend in Maryland for my 20-year college reunion was a slice of non-stop busy and insanity and it all culminated into CB locking me out of the car after the babysitter arrived Friday afternoon to watch the kids so I could get a head start on rush hour traffic.  That was a whole mini debacle, but it just made the alcohol extra tasty when I finally arrived in down town Baltimore to meet up with three old college friends, pre-reunion.

I thought this Lechee Cosmo would taste all awesome and international with my sushi but lechees look like 

tiny brains and have a kinda bizarro flavor.  I stuck with pinot after this.  

It doesn't seem like 20 years since I graduated college.  Sometimes it feels like yesterday.  Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago and that I am not remembering it but rather watching a movie of a girl who looked just like me living my past, and I am disconnected from it all.

I was convinced I had changed so much since college.  I was hoping this was true because I was an idiot in college and probably a lot of people talked unfavorably about me behind my back... which is fine because I'm sure I deserved it because I was a social nitwit and prone to insecurity and immaturity.  I thought that NOW I was all "new and improved" until my closest friend in college, Birdie, told me I had not changed at all.  Either I was always way cooler than I thought, or I'm still and idiot.

She, of course, NEVER thought I was an idiot, then or now.  Which is why I always loved her.  She saw my "potential" back then, I guess, and watched me over the years not change so much as simply grow.  Grow in my confidence, grow through life experience, and finally feel comfortable being who I am and understanding my role in this world.

It's funny because I thought everyone would have changed so much.  Truth is, in some ways a lot had changed over 20 years... marriages, kids, more kids, careers, hardships, challenge and happiness... but in other ways nothing had changed.

I mean, nothing had changed in that everyone looked AWESOME... as if they'd been cryogenically frozen or something.  More importantly, everyone had of course matured but no one had really transformed in terms of personality.  Hegna was still the "Mom" doing her Skunk dance,  Eags was still hilarious as ever, Birdie was still all distracted with randomness like clipping toe nails in the car, BVN was falling down in the street and we were all sitting on the corner outside of Champs at 1:00 am watching some drunk kid get thrown out of the bar with a fight breaking out...  It coulda been 1992 again.  Except our clothes and hair were WAY better.



And, we could afford proper drinks.

I guess I didn't really undergo some massive "change" over the past 2 decades after all.  Yet, I do feel like I am a new and improved Alicia.  I'll stick with that.  Whatever.  One thing hasn't changed... I still hyper-analyze everything.

***

Monday night I had the amazing experience of hearing Matt Long speak to 180 women from our local Triathlon Club.  He also did a book signing and I got to meet him and shake his hand.  This guy is incredible.  You will never ever feel sorry for yourself over anything after you hear his story.  I am really looking forward to reading his book, The Long Run.

Hearing and meeting Matt Long made me revisit my whole "do people really change" thing.  (Like, who sits and stews about this stuff, I know!)  I mean, he lived through something that would have killed anyone else and therefore he must have changed, right?  I bet if I asked him, he'd say he had changed in many ways but I wondered how much he stayed the same to his friends and family.  His humor, his heart, his personality... was all of THAT changed or was he still the same Matt Long?

I thought about how the best of us is just sitting inside waiting for all the crap to be peeled away, waiting for our moment to be authentic and real and the best God made us.  Sometimes it takes life hammering away at us... chiseling us free from a block of marble until we finally recognize ourselves in our entirety.  In our strength and beauty - whole and complete.

That's what happened to Matt Long... he had to be smashed and broken to rebuild himself whole and complete.  I guess we all, in less dramatic ways, get those same opportunities.  I hope I've used mine wisely thus far.  In another 20 years, I guess we'll see.  I'm sure when I get there it will continue to feel like everything and nothing has changed.