But suddenly all the faces began to swim into focus.

By the bar was some guy from the football team. A girl from my English class was tucked away in a corner, sucking face with a tuba player.

And then there was the whole clique of popular girls, still standing in a tight circle, as if they had been directly beamed from the cafeteria, circa 1994, into this rundown tavern.

It was like high school all over again. Only drunker. And with added pounds stacked on hips everywhere.

This high school reunion turned out worse than I could have imagined. Plus, there was karaoke.

My high school experience was not like those picture-perfect images you see in Seventeen magazine fashion layouts. No cardigans. No crisp, colorful autumn leaves. No brawny jocks carrying me around on their shoulders after a lacrosse game.

I was not the girl who was totally crushing on a soccer player. I wasn't the girl that all the boys wanted to take to the prom. I didn't go out for pizza with the gang on Friday nights.

I was the weird kid with purple hair. As a grunge girl - all flannel, snarls and angst - I coveted my Sassy magazines and Bikini Kill CDs in an age of Ace of Base and Boys II Men. I never had a place to sit for lunch.

The highlights of my high school life included drama club, late nights with older wannabe poets at coffee shops and reading The Catcher in the Rye, which was my gateway drug to all kinds of subversive literature.

Ten years later, I thought things would be different. I was in a room with mature adults, many with children, who had careers and lives far beyond our small Ohio high school. We had all changed for the better. We were all ready to be open, accepting and welcoming of each other and our various places in life, right?

Whatever.

At my reunion, I learned that mean girls will always be mean girls. Pasty, aging jocks will always think they're more attractive than they really are. And high school cliques - more so than the pyramids and the Rosetta Stone - will always stand the test of time.

And did I mention there was karaoke? Specifically, one chess club member who was senselessly slaughtering The Wind Beneath My Wings.

So I did what any other person in my awkward shoes would do.

I drowned myself in gin.

Later, my dad advised me that things will be different after 25 years or so.

"Then you show up to the reunions just to see who died!" he said, in what I assume is an attempt to give me hope for the future.

But I don't think I'll be attending many more reunions. Going to this one taught me enough about myself.

I realized my past really was as bad as I remember. I spent so much time in overwhelming pain and depression, I'm surprised I made it through it. I had reoccurring daydreams of slashing my wrists or gouging out my eyes with a Bic pen or, worse, pulling a Heathers on the whole school.

Some days were easy - a bowl of cereal in the morning, coasting through classes unnoticed and a ride on the bus with my headphones on to drown out everyone else's noise. But most days were really, really horrible - waking up late, forgetting my homework, feeling the snickers behind my back in the hallway, unearthing mean notes in my locker, crying in the bathroom stall and begging myself to make it past 11 a.m., then noon, then the end of the school day ... then finally until it was time to graduate. That was high school for me.

They say you can't go home again.

But you can - just once - and then you can walk away and happily leave it there.

E-mail mdowns@enquirer.com