When students imagine their senior year they are spending time with friends they met in 9th grade or earlier, scoring the winning point of their last high school game, dancing with their friends at prom, or never having to see the teacher who wouldn’t bump their grade from an 89.4 to a 90.  I shared many of these images in my mind but the frame was altered with one text from my mom, “I got orders to Maryland.”

My parents met while my mother was still in high school and my dad had graduated the year before in the Eastern part of North Carolina.  When they began dating my father was already signed up for basic training for the Air Force and my mother worked at Taco Bell.  My mother found out that she was pregnant at 17 years old when my father was still away in Technical school, where the military goes to train for their careers.  When they were reunited they did what many young parents do: they got married.

The first base we were stationed at was Shaw Air Force base in South Carolina.  In the early months of 2001 my mother followed in my father’s footsteps and joined the Air Force.  Unfortunately, like many teenage marriages in the modern age, my parents drifted apart and eventually divorced when I was around 8 years old.  Around this time in my life many things around me were changing too quickly for me to even understand.  My father left the Air Force and moved back to North Carolina where the rest of his family lived.

One lucky thing that I have experienced as a military child is I haven’t moved as often as many others do.  The usual rotation for most military members is an average of 4 years per base and we stayed at the same base for roughly 10 years.  The first “big” move I had been when my mother received a development to Germany for 7 months and I couldn’t go with her.  So, we packed up the house we lived in on base and my mother shipped off to Germany and I took a trip to North Carolina to start my first year in middle school where I knew no one.

 The upside was that I did get to spend time with my father who I typically only saw on major holidays and over summer.  The one aspect that I was most afraid of was making friends.  I had always been shy and quiet and being put in this new environment tested me.  Eventually I did make friends and even the best friend I am still in touch with today.

I ended up spending the full school year with my father and by the time summer came around my mother was there to pack up my stuff again and move me back to South Carolina.  I couldn’t have guessed it would only be a year until my mother got another set of orders to Okinawa, Japan.  This couldn’t be a possibility for us due to my scoliosis and the lack of a facility with the necessary treatment I would need.  So instead of Japan we went to Satellite Beach, Florida less than 30 minutes south of Cocoa Beach.  There I would start the 8th grade and meet my lifelong best friend, at least I hope she is since we got matching tattoos as a symbol of our friendship.  

Taking you back to the beginning of the article, I was in my 11th grade math class with just a few minutes left.  When I got the text, my mother had already warned me that she could be getting a higher level job in another state but it wasn’t confirmed.  Since I was coming up on my senior year of high school, the Air Force might have been able to keep my mother where she was until I graduated.  However, that’s not how things went.  She had gotten the official word and now I had 2 options.  I could have either stayed in Florida and bunked with my best friend or someone else or I could move with my mother and start over during my senior year of high school.  As much as I did want to stay in Florida I couldn’t stay with my best friend, she lives in an 2 bedroom apartment with her mother and sister with 1 bathroom and there would have been no room for me.  The hardest thing about the move was when I had to tell my best friend, who has been struggling with extreme anxiety, that I had to leave.  

While I did have some challenges with being a military brat, it changed me for the better.  It is true I didn’t get to spend my last year of high school with my friends, however,  it’s taught me a few lessons.  The first was that I learned how to be more independent. One of the most important things a person can learn is to be content with oneself, if you can’t stand your own company then how can you expect anyone else to?  The second thing is I learned how to change myself for the better.  If I had never moved to Maryland I would not have gotten into physical fitness or eating healthy the way I do now.  The most important lesson is how to adapt to the changes that catch you when you least expect it.  Life is never a sure thing, but the challenges I have faced have definitely made me stronger and better prepared to deal with the adversity that life will always throw at you.