These past couple of months have been the hardest. A ton has changed in such a short amount of time and I'm trying still get a grasp of life and breathe, but life is running in a marathon and I am chasing it in slow motion.

My family moved to Texas, I started attending a university, I moved into my own apartment, and most importantly, I left my hometown and moved out of my childhood home.

Moving is not easy. My family had two major moves when I was little. One from Oklahoma to Arkansas, then one from Arkansas to Alabama. I don't remember much from those moves, besides crying because I didn't want to learn how to speak "Bama-nese," which I am ironically extremely fluent in now.

I remember searching for houses all over town while living in an apartment just weeks before my brother and I started at our new schools. We fell in love with a house that had squeaky stairs, but we decided to let Dad figure that out on his own and hoped he wouldn't notice.

As soon as we moved in, memories started to take place in that house and continued to for eleven years. They consisted of sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags, practicing every sport in the backyard and driveway, countless boo-boos and doctoring from Mom, my brother breaking my blue lava lamp on the carpet and having to get stitches, hunting for a ghost we named Jeffery, multiple party celebrations and holidays, sleepless nights full of teenage drama, intimidating family meetings constructed by Dad, and every horrible phase that a girl could go through.

It consisted of simple things, such as family dinners, watching movies together, having friends spend the night, and even arguments that ended up bringing our family even closer.

There were memories in that house that even I haven't told anybody about yet. That house, whether our family was having a good day or a bad day, was a place full of love, laughter, faith, and kindness. We had an open door policy and everyone knew that. All the neighborhood kids loved hanging out at our house.

Our house wasn't a home, of course, without our dogs. We had a white toy poodle named Fluffy and then a Chihuahua-Dachshund mix named Tenley. We had the most perfect dogs inside the most perfect home.

Our neighbors were our second family. They became our best friends and the people that we shared holidays, fun-filled weekends, and vacations with.

In my eyes, our home was the definition of perfect.

My parents sold our house and moved to Texas in September 2015. It has been five long months of missing my home. I know one day I will eventually get over it, but for now, I visit it any chance I get.

Moving out of a childhood home is one of the hardest experiences I have ever faced. It's a bittersweet feeling, but it is also lonely and sad. I'm still trying to grasp the idea that I will never be able to step foot in that house again unless I can somehow find a way to ask the new owners without sounding creepy; but even then, it wouldn't feel right or be the same.

Someone built that house about 20 years ago, not knowing that it would mean the world to a girl from ages 7 to 18. Someone built that house 20 years ago, not knowing how special it would be to a family of four. Someone built that house 20 years ago, not knowing how many memories would be made in it.

Someone built that house 20 years ago, but that house built me.