You can never predict the future, but you can control your reaction. Hearing that my family was moving away from the place I grew up was one of the hardest things I have had to deal with. It would mean I’d have to leave all of my friends and the only place I have ever called home. I didn’t understand how my parents could do this to me. I had roots in the town I was raised in and I wasn’t ready to pull them out. I begged my parents and tried to find a way around moving, I promised to be good and never again stay out past my curfew. It was all in vein though. There was nothing I could have said to change their minds. My dad had lost his job and we had to move to my lake house in Oklahoma.

My friends threw me the best going away party, we all made promises to text every day and to send real letters like they do in the movies. It didn’t turn out like that though. After a few weeks I talked to only a handful of my old friends and even with them, it was hard to find things to say. As the first day of my new school approached at an alarming rate I was losing touch with my home town. I was scared to enter a new school where no one knew me. I was scared that the kids wouldn’t like me or I wouldn’t like them. I was scared that I wouldn’t have anyone to sit with on the first day of school and I’d be forced to eat by myself, or worse, with people who weren’t anything like me. It didn’t help that the night before school I watched mean girls either.

The first day came too soon, and after hours of trying to pick out the perfect outfit I was finally ready to start my new life. Standing in front of the school I took a deep breath before entering the building and only after a few steps in I was called to by the lady sitting in the main office. Nervously, I stepped forward and asked her what was wrong. Being as it was my first time even stepping into the building I had to wear a visitor pass until I had been fully admitted into the school. Grateful that was it I continued to the counselors office to fill out the papers.

Walking into my first class of the day had never been so hard. I was already twenty minutes late and I could just picture everyone turning in their seats, craning their necks around to see who had entered their classroom. I straightened my shoulders and held my head a little higher as I turned the door knob to the room. After handing the teacher my note I turned to take a seat and my heart started to race, where was I going to sit? Someone in the back corner of the room called to me and asked if I wanted to sit with them, and I knew after taking my seat, that this wasn’t scary after all and I was going to be just fine. I might have even starting to like it more than the big city i had grown up in.