Personal Narrative: Moving Away From Home

People often hear or maybe seen on the news of houses being broken into. We do our best to protect ourselves and our families from the unenviable happening. We have locks, we purchase alarm systems and other forms of defense to keep strangers out and our possessions in. When I woke up on Tuesday, April 6th, 2011, I never imagined someone would come inside of my home and ramble through my things and take from me whatever they wanted. If I could have seen into the future, I would attempt to change the minds of the guys who broke into my apartment.

Looming in front of me was something new, a fresh start. Despite being this, it seemed cold and trying, something that sent shivers down my spine. Mixed emotions of uncertainty and optimism had filled my first day of middle school; and as my final year is drawing to a close, I realize that this place-this transitional time in my life- is something that I never want to leave. I created a home away from home, and a family, over the short three years spent learning here. Each school year, from first to concluding, brought new experiences in which have altered my life. These are the things that I am hoping to carry over into high school-my next chapter. Every experience in which middle school has brought leaves me changed indefinitely, shaped for the future ahead.

Nine years ago, I never could have imagined I’d be writing this essay. I was a senior in high school, and, like the rest of my classmates, I was apprehensive about the future. Unlike my classmates, I felt like I had missed the proverbial “you need to get your life together” message. I watched my classmates apply to colleges, their majors already decided and their future careers mapped out. While I was an above average student, I felt I lacked the decisiveness my classmates seemed to have. I did not feel passionate about a career or even a field of study. I felt defective. This was compounded by the financial strain I knew attending college would have on my family. It seemed wasteful to try to “find my passion” at school while squandering

It all started in 2012, I was only a mere 12 year old. I found out I would be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, my moms job was transferring and I would be moving in just a few short months. I was terrified, I realized I would be starting a new school where I knew absolutely no one, having to start all over again, but most importantly I would be leaving my best friends, family and everything I had ever known. It’s a scary thought especially since I had never even moved houses before. I spent the next few months stressing out and slowly saying my painful goodbyes. My last day of school was the hardest of all, I slowly went around to all the people I grew up with saying goodbye, knowing i’d never see the majority of them again. I moved only a few days after that. I spent the majority of that summer in my new house with no friends, crying and freaking out about starting at my new school. It wasn’t until a few weeks before school started that I made my first friends on my new soccer team.

I cannot believe I have made it this far this quickly. It feels like just yesterday when I was accepting my diploma from Mr. Salvatore, my middle school principal and crying while hugging friends who I knew would be attending a different high school than I. Then, on that hot September day, walking through what I thought must have been the biggest school in the state of New Jersey, I got lost, made new friends, and the thought of college was but a dwarfed blip on my radar, far, far away from the center of my mind. Subsequently, in tenth grade, Union High School became smaller and my excitement for graduation was planted by the upperclassmen’s conversations about the upcoming prom and graduation.

“Can we talk about moving to Minnesota?”, my father would ask. “I don’t want to, ” I’d always responded. This lasted for four years, my father always looking towards the future, my future, but never willing to press me towards the opportunities he saw. I had friends, an expansive yard where I could play, take pictures, observe the wildlife, a quaint home in a quaint neighborhood attending a quaint school in northern Mississippi, and each time the question came up, a feeling of fear welled up as I thought about how different it would all be, really the complete opposite: a rural home to a suburban apartment, a school with fewer than a thousand students for grades K-12 to one quadruple the size, a world with friends, one without. Eventually, after my eighth grade year, I let in to my father and allowed logic to clear the emotions that

It had been along time since something new had entered my world. Amongst the ruins of our space elevator, I sat, head bowed, and payed my respects to a whole civilization lost. The rusted steel and crumbled mortar only amplified my grief. Rotating my mandibles I rose, and scuttled out into the hive proper, or what was left of it. There used to be noise, movement all accross our home, the workers furthering the goals of our Mother, the advisors contstatly planning our expansion into all of the fertile worlds of our system. Now, as I move through the entrance mound, there is only silence, and the sound of my chitin clicking harshly against the floor, echoing in a way I had once found eirie.

Moving away from the place that one calls home is a hard situation, especially for a child at a young age. I lived in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and I was in the eighth grade. I had been in Brookhaven School District majority of my childhood. I had plenty of friends, and I was involved in school clubs. It was two weeks before the beginning of my freshman year when I got the news. My mom called me in her room and explained why I had to transfer schools. My sister has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, and she felt that it was best that we try a smaller school. I called up my friends to tell them the news, and we decided that these last few nights were going to be the best. We went out to bowl, had sleep overs, and had a special trip to the waterpark. I felt so happy to get that time with them, but moving day came and ruined all of the fun. That morning we packed up the house, said our goodbyes to our neighbors, and drove away. Though as I rode in the car towards a new beginning, I felt like I left behind the whole world behind me.

When my dad and stepmom began talking about moving, I didn’t think much of it. They had moved a lot, so I admit I wasn’t really worried about it. Where they were living then, was my favorite out of all the places they had lived because it was right down the road from my mom’s house. It was easy for my sister, Kelcey, and I to go visit our dad, stepmom, and little sister, Kyra. We could literally just walk, before I had a car, over there almost whenever we wanted. But, that changed when they started talking about moving again.

I have been a military child since birth, moving from place to place, seeing things I'd care to not have seen and seeing man hit rock bottom from a pink slip out the army, but this is all normal for me. My father has an amazing job and he loves his career, even if it moves us from small towns to enormous cities every three years. There was one move that impartially changed my views on not only the army but on myself, when people began treating me differently and staring at me as I walked by. It was the move to Osan south korea, a brand new country that when I first arrived had left me put in the dark and shut me out completely, until I met peoplled the way and showed me the beauty of the country, leaving me with a more open mind to new things.

Jessica just moved out of her hometown to move to Florida. Her mother enrolled her to a local High School from where she lives. She was very excited to go because she wanted to make new friends and have a fresh start. She is very pretty and outgoing so she instantly made friends and had got the attention of almost all the football team. Katie the caption of the cheerleader did not like her because she thought Jessica was going to take her boyfriend. She told her friends to tweet about Jessica and say mean stuff about her so Jessica can move back. Her friends listen and told other people to say bad things about Jessica. People soon stopped hanging out with her and she was devastated. Everyday their will be people commenting and saying hurtful

Can you imagine being pulled from the only place you have known and loved, and being placed in completely new surroundings? It is not the easiest transition I can tell you that. I’m talking about moving, more specifically, the moment I found out. I was eight years old at the time. I remember my parents coming in and breaking the news to me. Their reason was we simply could not afford to drive back and forth so much. We lived in Peoria, Oklahoma and had been for roughly 7 years. So for most of my life I had lived here. My Dad worked for Pepsi at the time and also was the Chief fireman for the Peoria Fire Department. My Mom worked at Galena’s high school and because of this my sister and I went to school there. The commute to work & school everyday

The aspect that related to me the most this week was the chapter on relocation. My relocation was actually pretty self-centered in that I wanted to be close to my family after having a child. I remember growing up in Kankakee and coming back for a year after undergraduate studies and having big dreams for the city of Kankakee, but none of these dreams were involved with my decision to move back. When Perkins opens up with the chapter of relocation there is a statement that stood out to me in regard to this matter. “Of the three R’s that anchor the guiding philosophy of the Christian community development movement, relocation is clearly the most distinctive and troublesome.” (Perkins, 75) Relocation to the Kankakee area was easy, because

For the last couple of months I was stressed out because my father didn’t have a job. He just started his new job last Tuesday. However, now we are going to move to Blairsville. We now have a twenty two month old and a one month old living with us as my sister in law is having some health issues and my brother works. My parents want to move as soon as possible, so we are trying to pack. That is not an easy thing with two young children around. It stresses me out because there is so much to do and I am not good at meeting new people. My life is currently going through some big changes and I am expected to have a 3.75 GPA or higher so that I can get scholarship money for college. I enjoy playing Call of Duty on my Xbox. I find the clear mission

“She is so stupid!” a girl whispered to her friend. They both giggled after they talked bad about me. Even though I can’t speak any English, I could still understand what they said. Those words will be in my mind for the rest of my life.