Six states. Too many schools to count.
Being the new girl became less and less an experience of unfamiliarity and rather something so mechanic and routine. I would walk into school on the first day and weave through the throngs of people who already have their established clique, trying my hardest not to look out of place –– mostly keeping to myself while secretly dying inside that no one has bothered to come up and say hello. I kept telling myself it would change eventually. Maybe it would be tomorrow, a week from now or just before winter break. Some way, somehow I would find my people –– the people I'd walk to class with, the people to congregate with around my locker, the people who would make me feel less alone, the people who would make all the suffering and loneliness on the first days of school worth it.
And of course, as much as I avoid having the spotlight on me, my teachers seemed to have this sadistic urge to embarrass me in front of the pool of potential friends and have me introduce myself. And at a certain point, I found myself having memorizing the hackneyed facts. As if the answers to the most generic questions define who I am. No one was willing to hear the answers to questions other than: What's your name? What brings you here? Where did you come from?
No one was willing to dig a little deeper.
I know it sounds a little dramatic. Maybe it is for the sake of getting the message across. But this is what my life was like growing up. Never having one place to call my hometown or one house labeled as the place I was raised in. Never having one set group of friends. Just temporary friendships here and there and failed long-distance ones. People would be forgotten along the way until their pictures would pop up on my Facebook feed. I envy everyone who has childhood best friends when I didn't even have the same best friend for longer than two years.
It's hard –– not only not having stable relationships but also anticipating the end of relationships in general. Somewhere down the line, I'll be moving again and my friends now will forget about me. And while I know we'll all try to do our best to keep in touch, somewhere down the line my previous best friend for life becomes nothing more than a distant memory.
Yeah, I've been the new girl. And while I put a smile on my face and tell the world moving around as a kid was an opportunity to meet so many different people and experience different cultures, I want to scream that it made me so vulnerable. I didn't view change as something exciting or as a gateway to something shiny and new, but rather something debilitating and frightening.
And as I keep writing this article, I keep looking for the turning point. Something positive to grab from it all like that stupid pop song that plays at the end of every movie –– that one lasting impression that reassures you it was worth it all. But even now, three years from the last move, I can't seem to find it. But I hope one day, I will.
