Edit it

One of my good friends is a teacher at my old high school, something I consistently forget. I was talking to her the other day and she said an old teacher had asked about me and that teacher wanted my email address; she was planning to come to Asheville for a conference. This teacher had taught my honors English 9 class but was more familiar to me as the yearbook adviser, the person I probably saw the most the last three years of high school, saw more than my family. Junior year I was an assistant editor; senior year was head editor. Yearbook at my high school wasn't an extra-curricular activity: it was life. The high school had one of the top yearbook programs in the nation; it consistently won every major award on state and national levels. This all sounds crazy unless you have ever seen the difference between a nationally recognized book and a regular one. Then it makes perfect sense. But that sort of work requires the amount of time usually only reserved for athletes pursuing college scholarships, and so I was in the yearbook office a half-hour before school started, during two of the seven periods of the day, and 4-6 hours after school. And some weekends. (I wasn't the only one. My senior year we had a staff of 120. Out of a school of a little under 1100. It was actually one of the popular things to do) I loved and hated it, the same feelings that I still reserve for the adviser of the book. I should rephrase that. We always had a complicated relationship. It was the hardest period of my life due to everything outside of yearbook and thinking of that time brings up rough memories. I love her dearly. I had only thought of her in passing these past ten years until my friend mentioned her coming to Asheville, and now it's all I'm thinking about. What am I supposed to say about these ten years? What is there to tell? Much too much, and yet nothing. I don't know how to successfully zoom out; what big markers to hit. I don't know how to edit this.

I don't know if we will actually connect. But if we do, I hope words come too.