Feeling good in my own (if not so young) skin

by JS on October 18, 2008

Friday night I had dinner with someone I haven’t regularly spent time with in twenty years. We are now the age our parents were when we knew each other.

Realizing this was a bit unsettling.

I was surprised at how easily we fell into talking to each other, telling the stories of how we got from there to where we are now. It was a compressed version of events, told over dinner, with lots of laughing and recognition.

Something about reconnecting with someone I have a shared history with — not just the personal history with each other, though that was obviously part of it — but coming from the same time and place felt very good. A strange sort of confirmation, that yeah we really did come from there, and we really are here now. (Being queer kids in Maine in the 1980s was mostly a whole lot of not fun.)

Here is a good place, much better I think for either of of us than where we were then. It seems we are both comfortable with who we are now, and have grown into the lives we are supposed to be living.