Ghosts.

So I have found a few people from my old high school on facebook. Not the high school from which I graduated, but the one before that. The place where I spent second through ninth grade.

I admit I'm afraid I'm going to regret this.

Okay.

I'm terrified.

Right now I'm even worried that one of those people is going to read this, and then know something - know how they hurt me or how it effected me - or maybe read this and then say something that will trigger all sorts of things I might not even remember or want to think about.

There were some REALLY nice people at that school. There were some people who stuck up for me when everyone else was mean. There were some boys who still treated me with respect even during "the butt grabbing phase". There were some who did not. The people I've friended are people who were respectful people - but I'm really scared about what might have been said after I left. True or untrue. About me as a person.

Was I known as that girl who let that guy feel her up in social studies class? Or the girl who let him do that stuff to her in his basement? How about the girl who hung out at the drive-in in the back of that kid's pick-up truck? How exaggerated were the claims? Or even if they weren't - how many people knew? And what did they think of me?

I wonder if I was the only one these sorts of things happened to - or if they happened to pretty much everyone and no one ever mentioned it?

At the next high school I was very careful not to let anything like that ever happen to me again. So careful that I didn't let anyone get too close to me. If I really liked a boy, I dumped him immediately.

Right now I am sort of shaking inside.

I'm putting this out there because I think it's important. Maybe it's not important at all. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.

One boy in particular...he seems to be mutual friends with everyone. I know he told his friends about the things he did to me. I know because they told me all about it. I know because at least one of them expected me to do the same for him. Yesterday it all seemed to far away and now today I'm looking at pictures of this guy who I've pretty much labeled as a creep in my head holding his the newest cute little addition to his family.

I still think of him as a creep.

I still want to reach through the screen and hit him square in the jaw and tell him how much he screwed me up inside.

I have to remind myself that he didn't know what was right and wrong and what exactly he was doing either. We were KIDS. Middle schoolers, even. I can't hold something like that against a person.

But I am so glad I moved when I did.

All of that disaster was gone. Clean slate. No one at the new school knew about those things. About what I'd been there or what I'd done.

As far as they knew I was totally innocent.

And I kept it that way.

Everyone looks so different.

I guess they all got to grow up out of that phase together. To see one another mature, get over it, and move on with life. Did anyone talk about it right out loud?

How would my life be different if I had stayed in that place? What would I have turned out to be?