It's interesting to hear someone else tell your story.
So I've always felt I had a pretty good grip on my story. My life, my history - where I've been and what I've done. Some memories for me are painful, and there has been more joy than I can count, but each one helped to create the person that exists now.
As I've gotten older it seems with each new thing I learn, something else in my brain fades away. It may be a persons name or an event. Feels like my brain is only about the size of a small box, and as new things get added to that box, something falls out. Trouble is, I am in no way in control of what falls out. What is lost may be something from deep in my past, or it could be the new persons name I heard just moments ago. Mostly I can confirm that those items dark and somber in my past are still there - lurking in the synapses, unwilling to fade away. There is no ranking of significance for what decides to depart the box.
Recently my memory has been tested at a 30 yr class reunion, where I read peoples name on their shirts, smiled and nodded because the name was "familiar", then realized I could not place the person at all. Many that were there I knew well and could have told you who they were without a name tag, but others were a vague blur. After 30 yrs, many people remembered me, and others I could see the same eye glaze as they wondered if I actually attended the same school. Gheez.
Last night, after 30 yrs, I finally reconnected with my best friend from high school. Combined we had 60 years of life between us neither had known. Kids, marriage, jobs, parents deaths, brothers and sisters, connections, health issues, you name it. Over a long dinner, and many drinks on the back patio we laughed and chatted. I think the most I learned though was about my life 30 yrs ago, through my friends eyes.
From his perspective, I lived a far different life.
He remembered almost fantastical stories that would best be immortalized in stylized comics. My life, through his lens, was something of a Andy Griffith Show meets 300 meets Ferris Bueller's Day Off. When I heard how he told what he remembered, I was pretty convinced he had the wrong guy, because that guy sounded like someone I would have dreamt of being. My friend though was pretty convinced my life was just that cool and great. My life was full and colorful, gregarious, and easily travelled. Evidently it was always sunny being me, I had tons of friends, and things just always came easy to me. Either I was "that guy" and I have forgotten, or I wasn't and my friends memory box is overfull, or, I was just pretty good at pretending. None of it was the mostly lonely kid I remember.
I think we all see each other in different ways. I saw my friend differently than he saw himself, and he saw me as someone I could not imagine. The truth is somehow blended in the middle of our views, how we see ourselves, and how others see us. The compilation of random glimpses and inferences, moments in time captured. Some may only see the exterior facade we allow, while others can see through that to the real you beneath. The lens that we each look through colors and twists our views to the perspective we want to see. It sharpens and yet many times blurs the lines between what is real and what is not.
One thing is for certain - the conversations last night have got me thinking really deeply about myself, and how I view others. If what I "think" about others are a skewed projection, or is it really the clear reality of the person. It also has me thinking about how I am being perceived - and what you see when you see me. This morning I am just hoping this memory is not one of those items that fall out of that small small box.
