One of the ignominious bits of media that has unfortunately stuck with me is How I Met Your Mother. Specifically, the episode which makes numerous jokes about "revertigo"---a combination of "revert" and "vertigo", the idea you might be a mature and capable adult in your day-to-day life, but go home for Christmas and suddenly you're 16 again, leaving dishes in the sink and picking fights with your little brother. The idea that specific people or places can (unwittingly) shove you into a headspace you'd otherwise left behind is a valuable one, even if it did get handed to me by a decade-old solidly mid sitcom.
I was thinking about this because I grabbed drinks with a colleague and acquitted myself quite well---asked fun questions, make jokes, talked about books and our educations and mutual colleagues. (Maybe she had a terrible time, but I tried to be my best self so I'm grading for effort...) Only then I went and got dinner with my best friend and college roommate, and suddenly I was not that person. Suddenly I was snarky and a little condescending, I picked fights (cordial fights! but still disagreements) that I didn't need to fight. And heading home afterwards, I realized the shape I'd slipped into: the pricklier, more unsure and therefore more defensive persona that was my armor in college.
It's been over a decade---yet I somehow twisted myself into that shape like no time had gone by at all. Perfect muscle memory of a person I no longer am.
And I don't want to be that person! I don't particularly like that person, and my friend doesn't deserve to deal with her so many years later. I don't think there's a solution to this other than my being more mindful when we get together, deliberately rejecting the old shape, but---well, how disappointing to find it still waiting for me.
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