Highschool.

I still dream of highschool. It's weird and my best friend from highschool - who is now a psychologist - says I have many unsolved issues, highschool is one of them.

I think highschool is pretty much the stage in life when we realize life is not easy. Before then, all we did was suck our thumbs, eat, play and sleep. The hardest things we ever had to deal with were going potty and accepting that we don't eat candy before meals.
But in highschool... we need to learn to cope with other people's expectations, and our own expectations... we need to learn to deal with affection, we need to learn to cope with rejection... we're constantly trying to make a point, to be noticed, to make a difference somehow... we're trying to fit in, we're falling in love...

Highschool was when I first felt love.
I still remember his name, his class, the clothes he wore... I even have his phone number somewhere and he's a "buddy" on one of those social networks. Did he know? Of course he did, the whole school knew it. Did he correspond? Of course not, it was highschool. He was in love with someone else who loved someone else who loved no one.
I still dream of highschool, and when I do, he's in that dream, sitting with me and chatting in the same place we used to when we were younger.

I also dream of my friends.
We had this closed group of friends that we hung out with a lot. There were 8 of us: 4 girls, 4 boys. And we were all "best friends". One of the boys is now a manager at a JP Morgan in London or something like this, the other one is a researcher for the Krakow University in Poland. They're still best friends, in fact, the latter was the first one's best man at his wedding last year. They all live in Europe, but they had a bachelor's party just 250 miles from here, and I heard about it from a third person who had attended the wedding the month before.
So yes, even the best friends gang fell apart... and yes, it upset me a lot because I still considered them very good friends.



I had a falling out with one of the girls 4 years ago.
Ever since we were about 10 years old, my mom would tell me she had a "feeling" about this particular girl, and that I should not trust her. I ignored mom, I had fights with mom, so I could stand up for my friend.
We remained friends over the years even though I moved back to Brazil... she visited me once and we had a great time, 18 years old and by ourselves during carnival in Brazil? We had it all.
But 4 years ago, when I went back to Portugal, my mom gave me the same speech. I remember my exact words were: "Mom, you couldn't break us apart when I was a kid, what makes you think you can do it now that I am 24?"
And a couple of months later, the falling out. Well, long story short, she was a real ungrateful back-stabbing b*tch. Moms know better, always listen to your mom.

It's sad though. I really thought we would all grow old together.
I still talk to a lot of people from highschool... but our lives are so much different now, even if I try fitting in again, I don't think I ever will.