Pomp and circumstance.

I went to the high school graduation for my alma mater tonight. The son of some close family friends was part of the class of 2005. It is a small school on the outskirts of Portland suburbia, and I haven't been to an event like this since my own commencement into adulthood. Mixed in with the cameras and grandparents were some of the members of my own graduating class, and I had the chance to have a few generic "What are you doing now?" conversations.

Wow. I am amazed at the insecurity that I feel when I am around my peers from that time in life. I have changed, and I know that they have also. I like the person I have become, yet somehow I always feel unnaturally self conscious when I am near these specific individuals. This is not to say that I had a particularly bad relationship in high school with anyone/anything besides my own self esteem. I think my subconscious just allows doubt and fear to somehow be triggered by their faces (think Rorschach ink blot type: "Uh, I see disapproval," all projected from the interior.) Fortunately these feelings come and go quickly; I don't have many lingering relationships with my former classmates.

What frightens me is that those insecurities can still regain control at the slightest emotional trigger. It makes me feel powerless. I know that the development of my identity through university and into adulthood was largely defined in contrast to the person I had been in the past, so perhaps it forces me to accept that there is more of that primitive Erin inside than I typically acknowledge.

The evening was a time of reliving an era gone by. I'll happily put that off again for another couple of years, thank you.