Life Happens | Teen Ink

Life Happens

May 30, 2011
By Natalie Bodenshok BRONZE, Park Ridge, IL, Illinois
Natalie Bodenshok BRONZE, Park Ridge, IL, Illinois
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Everyone always hears about that unlucky person moving out of state during high school. Whether it’s in a movie or the gossip in school, it’s always tricky. There is always some sort of drama involved, whether you like it or not.It really isn’t something you get to decide and take your own time to process. It’s just one of those things that hits you hard and all at once, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

Well as it seems, I’m moving to Charlotte, North Carolina for my senior year of high school. My mom likes to get jobs that relocate our whole family because she gets offered, as she says, “Big Bucks”. Don’t get me wrong, big bucks are great, just not when it gets in the way of my life. That may sound a bit self centered, but there’s no way to keep me from thinking about what will happen to me. Will I be the new, weird, hopefully not depressed girl in a stuck up school where kids don’t accept anyone? It’s my ultimate fear, I won’t know anything about anyone, and they won’t know anything about me. This whole move is about my sister, Lexie and I being scared and nothing else.

Another major factor that I’m terrified of is losing my friends, but mostly, my boyfriend, Donald. I’ve been with him for about two years and I am so lost at how I’m going to survive with my best friend living what seems like a million miles away. Only recently though, I’ve decided that I have to come to terms with the fact that I only have a small amount of time left in Illinois. The strange thing though, is that kids in my grade will occasionally come up and ask me “When are you leaving?” or “I don’t know if this is true, but I heard you were moving next year. Is that true? How are you feeling about it?”. Gossip causes chaos and unnatural socializing: these kids asking me this, see, I never talk to. Or I was friends with them many years ago and this is why they suddenly talk to me five or six years later. When unnatural things happen, it messes with my everyday life. I have old friends telling me that we have to hang out before I leave and it just makes me spaz out.

Anyway back to my boyfriend dilemma; we’ve been talking about what we should do for next year and we still haven’t come to a conclusion yet. All we hear from everyone is that long distance relationships don’t work and it isn’t worth it. I’ve sort of put that into my head, but it just breaks my heart and I couldn’t even imagine being apart from him. Now I understand that some say young love is foolish, but I truly don’t care what anyone says. Anything we do together is so calming,cheerful, and makes us truthfully happy, it’ll be very difficult to get used to not having that loving presence around me. That is really the problem that I care about most, any thinking about it just makes me very emotional and teary eyed. When people ask me what I’ll do about it I just try to act calm and say anything to get them to drop it, but after that, it all goes downhill in my mind and heart. The only true way that I can let it out is in my journal.

My journal is so very important to me, I would jump through flames just to save it. It has my whole life in it. It has a lot of different moods to it, but lately because of the move, it’s all been negative. That’s what scares me the most about leaving everything behind. I’m terrified that I’ll change as a person and end up despising myself for it. Here is one of the more recent, and a bit depressing entries in my journal, “ It feels like a morphed reality; knowing that in a few months this house will be empty of all of our memories, covered up by beige walls and a new family. They’ll never know what went on in this house for the past 10 years... Just know that it’s now their new home- to make their own memories in. I feel I can’t even look at anything in my room without thinking, picturing what it will look like empty, or filled with another person’s useless s*** instead of mine.. It’s killing me and it sucks.” There are only 5 things in my life that keep me sane; my dog Brutus, my sister Lexie, my boyfriend Donald, my friend Jimmy, and my beloved journal. I know I should add in my two best friends, but I can’t do it honestly. Jimmy is my oldest friend that I have here in Park Ridge. He’s been there to help me through all of my awkward and scary times. The sad thing is though, we lose touch occasionally. I feel like we just have some sort of comfortable bond that if needed, we could talk about anything. He isn’t a meddler either, he lets himself drift into the back round sometimes and that’s exactly what I like to do. I believe that’s why we have stayed such quiet, unannounced friends. Girls on the other hand, we never gotten along that well, I mean, we could be civil but my mind changes a whole lot within a short amount of time. Anyone who knows me could confirm that I get bored or disinterested easily with anything and anyone, besides Donald. I really think he is that one special person who I can never get rid of. Others could be gone and all I would have is the memory, but he’s different. In so many ways that I can feel, but just can’t ever seem to put into words or onto paper, there just isn’t any way to describe my feelings for this boy that I met 4 years ago and will live on with me forever.

Another worry that I have is how he will be when I’m gone. We’ve discussed it obviously, but neither of us will really know how it is until I’m actually gone. I have to admit, I do have my friend that is going to be keeping an eye on him for me because I won’t be able to. I’m really not worried about losing my best friend, Michelle. Even though we are basically complete opposites, we will always be there for each other no matter how far away we are from each other. She’s good at making jokes about the move, which lightens the mood, but I just wish there could be a way to remove this whole moving situation from my mind completely. I wish I could just go back to that dreaded morning of March 3rd, 2011, driving to school with my mom, when she slipped the comment. That comment that will be etched into my skull for the rest of my life. “What would you guys think if we moved to North Carolina?”, in that somber tone. My mind was running for the rest of the day, not able to focus on anything but that phrase that killed me inside. Little did I know what I was in for. Look at me now, I’m a wreck.



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