LEAVING by Lee Haponski - Spirit Writer

LEAVING by Lee Haponski 

Fifty years ago, I left Phoenix without much ceremony. One day I was a high school graduate with a yearbook, a diploma, and a vague sense of possibility; the next, I was driving west to Los Angeles to join my new classmates at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), leaving the past in the rearview mirror.

At eighteen, I thought leaving meant momentum — that to become who I wanted to be, I had to let go of where I’d been.

And for the most part, I did. I never went back. I didn’t keep up with classmates. I didn’t attend reunions. I built a life in L.A., one choice at a time, until Phoenix felt less like a place and more like a prologue.

But this fall, when the invitation to our 50th high school reunion arrived, something in me softened. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was time. After five decades, the edges of those years had blurred just enough to feel less charged. I bought a ticket and packed a bag.

The flight into Phoenix felt like flying into a memory — the low brown sprawl of the city, the outline of old streets I didn’t need to drive to remember. Things had changed, of course, but not enough to feel unrecognizable.

The reunion itself was a blur of name tags, hugs, and double-takes. We’d all aged, obviously, but in some strange way, I could still see the outlines of who we were then — the girl who sat in front of me in English class, the gang I went tubing and rock climbing with in Cave Creek. I even found a couple of grade school classmates who had made the full journey through West Phoenix High.

Our conversations skipped across decades, interested not just in the lives we’d made, but also in the stories we still remembered. It wasn’t just about reliving the past — it was about acknowledging it, gently and without judgment.

I didn’t feel out of place. But I didn’t feel rooted, either. And that felt right.

I’m happy I went. Truly. There was something grounding about returning as the person I am now — not to reclaim anything, but to quietly witness who I was then, and who I no longer needed to be.

And when it was time to leave again, I felt a familiar lightness. The same kind I felt at eighteen, though this time with more gratitude than urgency. I didn’t leave because I needed to. I left because I could.

Leaving, I’ve learned, doesn’t always mean turning your back. Sometimes it means honoring a place for what it gave you — even if what it gave you was the instinct to move on.