A personal essay about becoming familiar with life’s unknowns.

 

I was 8 years old when we moved houses. We had moved once before, but I was too young to remember. I came home from school one day and saw the “THIS HOME FOR SALE” sign out front, and I kicked that sign really hard. I kicked it as hard as I could with my stumpy little legs. I huffed and puffed at that sign like it was my sworn enemy.

I looked around our front yard, the yard that would soon belong to someone else. We lived at the end of a cul-de-sac in a big red brick house. The two trees in our front yard spilled their leaves onto the driveway year after year. In the summer, beautiful white flowers would bloom in place of the leaves, showering the driveway with white petals. It was a beauty that would be etched in my mind for the rest of my life.

I walked inside, defeat pulsing through me. The defeated feeling lessened as I was embraced with the familiar smells of home. I plopped down in one of our bright blue kitchen chairs. I was always skeptical why my mother, who swears by browns and neutral colors, chose those chairs. I would miss them. The evil people coming to live in our house wanted all our furniture, too. Selfish, miserable people. I was 8 years old, and I felt helpless. My life was changing and there was nothing I could do but accept it. It was one of the first times in my life that made me realize how much change hurt, and how much I hated it. 

            We didn’t move far. We didn’t even switch neighborhoods. Yet it felt like we had moved towns, maybe even states. I thought about my old bedroom, with those two big windows overlooking our backyard. Our swing set sat out back, “Alex and Amanda’s Castle” carved into the wood. This change was a lot for my young heart to handle. My mother told me I was brave. I desperately wanted to believe her. But courage and bravery seemed like far off qualities. My mother must have been lying. I was 8 years old and scared.

            Our new house had a pool and overlooked the golf course. My brother was ecstatic, and couldn’t stop talking about the amenities at this new house. A part of me was excited too, especially after being at the house and seeing the space we’d soon occupy. There’s always something fantastic about a big change. I didn’t realize it then, but this pivotal moment in my life was just a foreshadowing of what was to come. I was 8 years old, and I had no idea what the world had in store for me. 

            Now, I’m 21 and clueless. One thing I had been counting on was having a plan for myself by the time I graduated. But as beloved “Friends” character Phoebe Buffay would say, “I don’t even have a pla-.” When I started the school year, the word “senior” was said so many times the first day of school that I went home and cried. I cried because inside, I felt 8 years old again.  It felt like the world was closing in on all sides and there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was no sign for me to kick now.

I came home from that first day and laid in bed and listened to the cars drive by out my window. It was still summer out, and the windows were opened all the way to let any bit of breeze come through. I looked around my room, the last room I would have in college. I couldn’t shake the somber feeling flowing through me. This was it. This was my last year, my last first day of school, my last fall semester. I felt my chest tighten up. My mother wasn’t there to tell me I was brave. I still didn’t feel it, either.

I felt 8 again when we moved houses. I felt 14 again when I changed schools. I felt 17 again when I changed dance studios. It helped me to think about that summer day when I was 8. I could feel the cloth of those bright blue chairs. And oddly enough, I missed that day. I missed the feeling of being young and experiencing change for the first time. I missed that house more than ever, but I saw now all the great memories we had there. I thought, maybe things won’t be so bad when I graduate, maybe I’ll be able to look back at these small moments and realize how big they really were. 

What felt unknown was actually familiar. I knew that I could get past this fear. If I learned anything from being 8, it was that fear is also bravery. It was a lesson I learned from my mother, albeit many years later.

            Ironically, change has become one of the few things in my life that remained constant. As I got older, there were times I even invited change. I was starting to see how vulnerability could alter your life. I was 10, and I was 14, and I was 18, and I was still scared. But what was important this time was that I knew how to use fear as fuel. I began to realize that fear was also bravery, something I would have never understood when I was 8. I had to face change head on, over and over. I had to realize the benefit of change before I could grow from it. 

As I approach the end of my last fall semester, and start to think about my last and final semester of college, many thoughts hit me at once. Where will I go? Who will I meet? How much will this change affect me, and mold me into the person I’ve yet to become? These questions, in a way, excite me with the never ending possibilities they possess. I could move to London right after graduation, or I could get a job back home, or I could somehow miraculously get into graduate school and carve out a path from there. Maybe I’ll have no job. It’s all really scary to think about. But I’ve been here before. I’ve been faced with these challenges for years.

This summer, I was 21 and we moved. We moved out of the house that induced my first heartbreak. And now, here we were moving on. The “THIS HOUSE FOR SALE” sign was back outside on our front lawn. It took everything in me not to kick it again. There were more evil people coming to live in our house. They robbed my parents and got the house for less than half of what it was worth. I think that bothered me the most. Our beautiful house, barely keeping hold of its dignity. I learned that moving and uprooting yourself from a place where you’ve built your life will always be hard. Maybe that is what compels me to travel, so I don’t have to grow attached to one place and feel my heart being ripped out every time I must leave it.

A quote I found recently said, “One is never afraid of the unknowns. One is afraid of the knowns coming to an end.” Nothing has read more true to me, in this process of discovering my future. It is not that I fear what is on the other side of graduation. I am 21 years old, I have my entire life ahead of me. It is exhilarating to know that I have so much future. So much time and space to occupy. It is of course, the knowns that I will miss. The knowns that I cling to. I think about my first day freshman year, and how different I was then. How different I am now. That summer was particularly hot, leaving me particularly sweaty walking to my first class. I never knew how much this small town would come to shape me. I thought back to that 8 year old. That new house became my safe haven. I grew up there, stayed up late watching movies with my family, had family parties and Christmas Eve there. That house gave me more memories than I thought were possible.

But the treasures that life continues to offer after a big, fantastic change, is amazing. And they are changes worth waiting for. These were some of the best 4 years of my life, and I thought I didn’t need them. But I did. I needed this university as much as it needed me. And maybe there’s a flat in London waiting for me to sign its lease and start my life. Only time will tell. 

For now, I will continue to feel fear and bravery. In the midst of leaving the knowns, I will find a spectacular amount of life changing unknowns. That, in my opinion, is worth changing for.