The first time I ever moved was at the age of 2, going from the below freezing temperatures of Michigan to the blistering heat Texas had to offer. This didn’t affect me much since I was barely able to stand up straight and talk properly, but what I hadn’t known was that this was going to be an endless cycle of goodbyes and broken promises.

Ending up in what was the small city of Rockwall at the time, my family found ourselves renting out a one story house from the old man living behind us. Howard Dobbs, the elementary school I attended, was unwelcoming to say the least. I was not the skinniest kid there, nor was I the wealthiest, which put a target on my back for those who picked on the weak. The hurtful words I’d hear my classmates mutter to their friends broke the heart of the naive little girl inside of me. 

Fat.

Ugly.

Different. 

I felt ashamed and disappointed in myself for not saying anything back then, but who would’ve believed the new girl anyway? Especially over the words of children whose parents ruled the school.

Finally in the summer after third grade I moved to the place that I would soon cherish for years to come; Royse City. Coincidentally one of my friends from Rockwall also ended up moving there. I remember the first day I spotted Megan after moving. It was during a family orientation at Miss May Vernon, a school for only fourth graders.

While observing the swarm of people across the cafeteria I spotted the fiery red hair of a mother whose serene laugh was recognizable from a mile away alongside her petite daughter, both chatting with the administration. I was so caught up at the possibility of it being Megan and her mother that I bumped straight into the chest of a stranger. 

Following that incident on the first day of fourth grade in the gymnasium, Megan and I became inseparable. We were always spending the weekends at each other’s houses, talking over the phone at all hours of the night and somehow faked being cousins for a little while just to make school more interesting. That was until we got into an argument and she declared we weren’t family anymore in front of the whole cafeteria. 

We planned out our whole future together while I drove us around the acres of land my house had in my brand new doom buggy. We were going to live at her house, go to The University of Texas at Austin, and become dentists in the same building. No if, ands or buts about it.

In spite of this, the two month notice my family got from the landlord flushed our pinky promised plans down the drain and once again I was going to be the new girl.

But this time all alone. 

After a while the cycle becomes repetitive. The dreams of a house surrounded by a white picket fence never come true, and the hope for something stable gets packed away into yet another Home Depot box taped shut. Ready to be placed in the U-Haul and unloaded in Plano, then loaded back up to head to Lewisville.

The life of a new girl is filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, love and loss, but isn’t that the same as everyone else? That’s why I cherished my childhood fantasies, but I realized that just because everything is not always sunshine and rainbows doesn’t mean that things won’t get better. The dreams for a house on the hills shouldn’t cloud over the reality I’m living in. 

I am who I am today because of the journey I’ve gone through and even though the greedy side of me wishes to have more, I know that I am where I am supposed to be at this moment. I’ve created bonds with people I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t moved, experienced life changing memories with friends and family and have left my mark all across Texas.

Along the way I found my peace as the “new girl.”