Personal Narrative: Moving On

It was the year 2008, I had just graduated from St. Michael’s School located in Los Angeles, CA. This year was quite exhilarating for me also scary because I was going to attend an all-girls high school. Los Angeles was my birth place also a place where I called home. One day, I came home to hearing my parents talking about moving to Mississippi. I remained devastated, not only we were moving to the south, I’m moving away from childhood friends. I was worried I wouldn’t see them again and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make new friends in Mississippi.

Moving right before high school was one of the hardest experiences in his life. Imagine: Leaving behind the house you had grown up in. Leaving behind your neighborhood. Leaving behind all of your friends right before the biggest milestone known as high school. Chris felt like his world was falling apart. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, his family moved so that he could start high school in a more bourgeoisie neighborhood and so that he could attend a prestigious high school. Chris describes this life changing event as, “Helping me to come out of my shell and be more flexible.”

I want to leave, I want to disappear. Not a vacation, but that spontaneous quick escape with no bothers, just an unrestricted trip to free the mind and enjoy the bits of silence. To go by car to see how the scenery around me changes as I kill the distance, while listening to my favorite music as loud as I can. Just shout out my lungs with my terrible singing. As the music plays, I will grab a book, which will get all my beliefs and views away. No matter what the book will be about. As long as it would get me away, away from here. There would be just me and the characters of the novel, who struggle, fight, and compete, while they face delight, pleasure, and glory. Every so often, I will stop at the cafes on the road to grab some food, which

- my chest is going to collapse.. maybe more emotionally than physically but it all feels as if the pain is real and can always be felt.

I have gone through many experiences that have tried to tear me down. Life will never seize to throw obstacles my way. These obstacles, however, have proven to be positives that fuel me to be the person I never knew before. They teach me to stand out while taking a stand and be the powerful, independent woman that I am meant to be.

Home is the beginning of one’s book. It is where your story begins, forms its characters, shows its purpose, and reveals its ora. This is how mine is written. Home is on the buzzing highway down a bumpy gravel road. It’s Brandon, Mississippi. It is the only home I’ve ever known. Home is the smell of homemade biscuits and tomato gravy on Saturday mornings. It is “Bless Your Heart” and “Yes Mam” and “No Sir”. The little bedroom in the back of a grey double-wide where Carrie Underwood songs played and where I learned to curl my hair and put on mascara. My cousins and I running around with mason jars, chasing the lightning bugs. Bar-B-q on the back porch and never meeting a stranger. It is the morals learned and the identity

As I stared out the passenger window of my mother's black BMW that was currently halted at a red light, the reality of my forever-changed life hit me, hard. My father had, once again, charmed his way to a better position in the army with his compelling words, but everything comes with a price. This time it happened to be at the expense of my junior year. I wasn't exactly the cheerleader, but I had established a routine that I didn’t intend on changing. This adjustment was of no concern to my mother, who had never been one to argue, considering most of the people she interacted with were overseas. So, thanks to my parents, here I was on the first day of the 11th grade at Northside High School in Philadelphia instead of Atlanta, where I previously lived. The

Throughout the semester I have noticed my writing grow significantly. Some of my work was a bit sketchy but that could be fixed by proofreading. I did not like writing all of my papers but I did enjoy the reading involved for the book reviews.

Cause we're scared to see each other with somebody else” - Drake ‘Doing It Wrong’

Across from Pleasant Hill Elementary School, there is a playground. About 50 meters from the park lies the Birchwood Recreation Center, and right in front of that center lies a small body of water that connects two ponds together; that small flow of water became a symbol of my elementary school years, we called it the creek. In the“we”, I am including myself, my friends, and all the hopes and dreams of our younger selves--dreams forgotten before they could be fulfilled. I live smack-dab in the middle between Pleasant Hill Elementary School and William Fremd High School; ironically, the only school I had to take the bus to attend was middle school.

As we pulled into the college parking lot, the butterflies were released into my stomach. I had always been shy, and three weeks without any contact with my family or close friends was going to be challenging for me. I had applied for the Governor’s Honors Academy, where I was required to stay at a college campus with one hundred and eighty five outstanding students from all over West Virginia. Students strolled past my dorm, eager to meet their roommates. Soon I realized I was going to have to use my own social skills to forage my way through the jungle of diverse people to create new friends.

“I’m coming!” I yelled to my dad, as I heard the engine of his car rumbling downstairs in the garage. I got in his car to begin the 10 minute drive to my high school. Throughout the whole car ride, I stared blankly out the window as my mind rushed, trying to process everything that had happened in the past few days. It all just felt unreal and artificial. We pulled up to Beckman High and I got out of the stone grey honda and walked up to commons, immediately hearing the sound of old rock music as a crowd of people surrounded the entrance. It was crazy to think that our Coach had touched each and every one of their lives.

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.

It was 2016, and I was finally a senior in high school. Being a senior in high school was something that I had dreamed of since my early middle school days, and at last, I was there. It was the last year in one of my least favorite environments, and I couldn’t wait to graduate and move away from the only place I had ever known. I had lived in the same town for seventeen years, and I had gone to the same school with the same people for thirteen years. I was looking forward to something new in my life. I was most excited for my senior year because it was the year that I was going to choose where I wanted to move away to and what school I wanted to spend the next four years of my life at. As the year moved along, I slowly realized that I wasn’t moving away and that I’d be staying home to attend college, which was one of the most difficult decisions that I ever had to make.

It was a Thursday night in the middle of March, as I pull into the school parking lot. I can see that there are mounds of suitcases and over stuffed duffle bags lined up on the faint lit sidewalks. I jumped out of the car with eagerness when I saw my friends waiting for me by the curb line. We leap with joy because; we knew that this was going to be one of the best trips of our final year in high school. The trip meant so much to us; we needed to be away from stress filled environment that is known as school.