I remember that it hurt; looking at her made me hurt. As the words stumbled out of my mouth I could see the pain in her eyes. I sat on the swingset, crossed my ankles and stared up at the bright, crisp sky. I was hoping this would make it easier to spill out what I had to say.

“ Adriana, I won’t be here next year.”  I said looking at her with sadness.

“ What?” she quickly said back.

“ I am moving, my parents are getting a divorce and I am going to live with my mom on the other side of town, I will not be at Baldwin next year.” I whispered as my voice shook and my tears began to roll down my cheek.
“You are kidding right? You cannot be serious!” she scrambled to spit out.
“No I am serious, I don’t want to go, but my parents have already  made up their minds.” I exclaimed as I began to cry.
“You can’t move! What am I going to do!” she began to shout; but not because she was angry, just hurt.
“I am sorry, I have to.” I mumbled.

I’ve always loved looking at the sky to calm my nerves, but today that didn’t seem to help. The more tears that seemed to roll down her cheek, the angrier I became. I wondered why my parents were doing this to me. I wanted someone to listen to me. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave.

The days of packing seemed never ending. The boxes were infinite and covered the house in all places I looked. I felt like I couldn’t get away from them all; a never ending sea of boxes. They were cardboard skyscrapers filled with the memories of the life I was leaving. I hated the sound of moving furniture, I never wanted to hear it again. I never liked the new house smell or meeting the neighbors, but that was just not the kind of person I was. I didn’t like change but I have slowly gotten more and more used to it.

My parents filed for a divorce when I was 9. Later that year they split up and moved to different sides of town which meant I had to move as well. At the end of the school year when my friends would ask me, “What teacher do you want to get next year?” I had to tell them that I would not be waiting at the bus stop with them or walking into school with them in September, but I would be at a completely different school across town by my mom’s new house. A year before I moved, this was unforeseeable. I would never imagine being torn from my best friends, yet that was my hard-to-face reality.

But sometimes, you have to just let things go, and just step back and hope that everything will work itself out. Luckily in my case, it did. I still keep in touch with my old friends, but I have made remarkable new friends. I have met so many new people that I would never have been able to meet if I hadn’t moved. I thought that I would completely loathe moving. But as I’ve grown up, I have come to realize sometimes change is for the better and everything has it’s way of working out. If I could go back now and have had the choice to move or stay, knowing it would work out as it did, I would not change a single thing that happened. Although, I wish I could go back in time, back to that swingset with my best friend, and tell myself that the pain I was feeling was not going to last, and that no matter what bus stop you are waiting at, you will always have friends standing there with you.