I've worked so hard to forget about high school since leaving it back in the 1990s. I even managed to forget about my 10th year reunion. But on a recent visit back home--my first in five years--a reminder of that period of life came as I drove past the school grounds on my way to a relative's home. Upon seeing the school, I didn't experience any of the PTSD-like symptoms I expected, even as the memory of my failures as an adolescent threatened to emerge. For a brief moment, I actually wondered if all my high school traumas were real or imagined.

During my visit at home I also came across three other graduates from '94 and '95 at a Japanese bar in Waikiki, and I was actually pleased to see them. I realized then that I had fully outgrown the inadequacies I felt in high school, having shed my obsessions about (un)popularity and peer acceptance (or rejection) since I graduated. 
  
These days (at the ripe old age of 30) I live in the Twin-Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, where I enjoy a remarkable network of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances from near and abroad--from places such as Indiana, Wisconsin, and DC, to South Korea, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and England. Equally rewarding has been my career in academia and the non-profit sector, where I've garnered rich experiences in the public health and youth development arenas. In my leisure time, I am devoted to enjoying the arts, travelling, relaxing at friends' cabins, playing amateur food critic, and trying out new martinis--a true Epicurean. Things could certainly be worse.

Overall life is great and promising, and I would like to leave the Midwest to experience the treasures of life in other places. Loving the East Coast, I am considering a move to Philadelphia, New York, or Boston. But I could settle for San Diego. 

I know that no matter where I go, however, home will always be Hawai'i, and part of that home and my history are those years I spent at Aiea High.

Gilbert Achay
July 2007