I know, sounds stupid, doesn't it?

My dearly beleaguered husband has tried hard to grasp the value I find in Facebook. He just cannot understand why I would want to get in touch with people from high school. Even he, who loved high school and had mostly positive experiences, cringes at the thought. His past is a closed chapter. Mine should be too, by all accounts. I did not have a single net positive year from Kindergarten through twelfth grade. It took me years after high school to figure out how not to be defensive or confrontational or severely awkward (and admittedly, I can fall back into those old habits sometimes.) Why on earth would I want to get back in touch with people from back then? People who bullied me for thirteen years?

That was the topic of an article on Salon yesterday. The author's view resonated with me, but I would like to take it for another spin, especially after reading some of the comments.

Being bullied for my entire school career wasn't just "a bad experience" that can be left behind. It doesn't stand in isolation like a bad relationship or a period of self-destructive behavior. That doesn't mean that I think about it constantly, mourn the childhood I "could have had" or feel like my entire life was writ by it. But no matter how well I have "grown beyond it" or "become stronger than that" or any other feel-good (and generally true) attitude, the truth is - it will always be a huge part of my past. I can't consider anything from before about age 18 without recognizing how that context colors everything. I closed the chapter but that didn't erase the text. So why would I want to revisit it, to reconnect with people who bullied me or stood by while I was being bullied?

We were all different people then. I am not the person I was when I was 16 or 12 or 8. The person I was then occasionally amuses me, often embarasses me, and mostly makes me wonder. The hormones, they were a'ragin', teh dramaz, they were high. We were smart enough to think we knew how the world worked, but so inexperienced that we didn't know what we should or could do with that knowledge. We were struggling to figure out the social thing without healthful guidance. I know I sometimes treated people poorly - either out of self-defense (or preemtive strikes) or due to poor behavioral modeling, or because I didn't know better yet, or because nobody bothered to redirect and teach us all any better. I see it now with adult eyes and wonder how we all managed to be locked in that high school together without exploding. I may have been the plankton of the social food chain, but I'm not sure anybody was truly at the top of it. Everyone felt like they were somewhere in the low-to-middle range and were clawing to make sure they didn't fall lower and get eaten.

I know I am not who I was then. I can see that in a million different way. Not superficial ways - in most superficial things, I'm pretty recognizable. I still whisper Rocky Horror AP lines under my breath at totally inappropriate times. I still play The Smiths at high volume so passersby don't get the wrong impression about me because I drive a minivan. No, in deeper ways. I cringe to think about the opinions I had about children and parents (all the while thinking I was a person who liked and understood kids) before I had some of my own. I just didn't get it back then. There are other examples, but I'll stop embarassing myself now.

That made me wonder, what kind of adults did my peers (I can't say friends, and hate to reduce them to just tormentors) grow up to be? Surely they are no more the childishly cruel demons of my youth than I am that childish creature. They are now adults, too - college graduates, business people, parents. People who, in most cases, honestly regret being a part of that cruel network; people who felt as locked in by it as I did; people who were so wrapped up in their own fears about their social position that they didn't even realize what they were doing. People who were violently struggling not to be hurt by it themselves, and generally failing, although I was in no position to see their struggle because of my own. People who are now suffering with their own children as they struggle through the same cruel stage.

I believed, and found to be true that everybody else has grown up just like me. I spoke to a woman I never thought I'd see again - live, in person, over a glass of wine while my kids played WII in her living room. We discussed her memories and regrets of that time, her own struggles that almost destroyed her life which I was in no position to see at the time, the fact that she is now a youth counselor who lectures on bullying and her memory of my being bullied has always been eaten at her.

Growing up and leaving it all behind did happen, but I didn't realize it wasn't complete until Facebook. When I saw that my bullies no longer exist and we were all reborn as adults, it finally threw the bolt in the door. I'm not looking for a second shot at being BFF with the cool kids from high school. I'm happy with my social life these days, and am now strong enough to recognize and call on the table the remnants of childish behavior that crop up now and then. Learning about those people as real live, hoping, hurting, loving, struggling humans, then and now, has allowed me to see them and myself with more compassion, which is an inherently peaceful feeling. I didn't "Friend" these people to pad my list of friends (electronic or psychological). I friended them because it was taking the high road for peace. It's been rather beautiful.