Most kids would say their biggest fears are the deep end of a pool or the kitchen at night when it is dark and the floorboards creak a little louder than usual. However, mine could not be consoled by closing my eyes and plugging my nose before jumping in or tiptoeing into my parent’s bed, flashlight in hand. My biggest fear has always been change. 

I stared at my wall, which once held colorful photographs and streaky light purple paint, now covered by large cardboard boxes stamped with hideous red lettering saying, “Fragile! Handle with care!”. Because of my dad’s job, I knew that moving again was inevitable. Molly, my neighbor and best friend knew it was inevitable too, but she still cried as the moving van pulled out of my driveway. I cried too as I stepped out of her front door the morning after our last sleepover, but my tears were filled with calamitous irony. Truthfully, I hated Tennessee, and deep down I wanted to run away from that suffocating town as fast as my legs would take me. I would much rather have stayed in a place where I was lonely and unhappy than get a chance to change everything. My tears were not out of sadness, they were out of fear. 

Starting fresh in South Carolina was an exhale that got stuck in my lungs. Air that would go stale, a breath I would choke on for months after. My new room was nice but I missed my old streaky paint and the huge bay windows. I peeled off the tape that sealed the souvenirs of my old life, all nestled into dusty brown boxes. The change was quick, I started school only two weeks later. By the end of February, I had a whole group of new friends and by March I even scored myself a boyfriend. Things were genuinely looking up for me and I had hope, although it was over just as fast as it came. By May, my friends were gone, and by mid-August, my boyfriend vanished too. All I had left by the end of the summer was a broken heart and a severe case of whiplash.

I found myself staring at my wall again, realizing that I had been abandoned by or forced to abandon every friendship I had ever made. So I developed the mindset that if I let go of everything I had, nothing else could be ripped away from me. I disconnected from the few straggling friendships I had left and stopped letting people try to get close to me. My whole freshman year was monotonous, without change. I struggled hard in most of my classes and often got no sleep at all. The days practically melted into the next, but that’s what I wanted. My fear of change had proliferated, but I insisted on calling it peace. 

The air was still warm and lively when I visited Molly at the end of that summer. The bumps in the road felt warm and familiar as my mom’s car drove down my old cul-deac. Being there was like I had just stepped through a time machine. Her room looked the same as it always has. Photobooth strips from the fourth-grade school fair were still pinned to her bulletin board and the blankets we used for our forts were still neatly draped over her bed. We went swimming, made smoothies, and went shopping during the day. At night we would watch nostalgic movies and stuff our faces with popcorn. What Molly does not know, is that after she fell asleep, I would sneak off and cry in her bathroom. I thought that I was just overwhelmed or homesick. Though looking back at it now, it is clear to me that my stomach was swollen from regret. 

All at once, memories from the continuous years when I felt nothing but pain and emptiness surrounded me, sucking me through a time warp and crushing my lungs. I was ten years old again, crying on my tire swing because the girls who lived behind me told me I wasn’t skinny or popular enough to be friends with them anymore. I was twelve again, crying in a bathroom stall because I felt like I didn’t belong and people in my class kept making fun of me. I was thirteen again, staring at a social media post, where a group of girls laughed about how they were happy I was moving, saying that nobody liked me anyway. That’s when I realized that because of change, I am not that girl anymore. Moving let me learn what happiness feels like and how to love myself. The changes that had taken shape in my life since moving to South Carolina had smoothed the edges I would cut myself on over and over again. All it took was a trip to the past, to realize that I like the future more. 

Two weeks later, I started my Sophomore year and vowed to stop self-sabotaging my friendships, to go out and experience new things, and to stop letting my fear of change hinder me from finding my place in the world. Through all of that, I not only found the difference between truly living and simply surviving, but I also got over my biggest fear. 

When you breathe in air, the oxygen moves into your blood. The bad stuff though, the carbon dioxide, gets filtered and sent straight to your lungs, where you then exhale it all back out. This happens subconsciously of course, but it is a basic function of life. In my opinion, change is a lot like that process; learning how to deal with it is like learning how to exhale. Even if I do find my bedroom walls covered up with cardboard boxes again, I think I would be okay. I wouldn’t be leaving my whole life behind me, I’d be taking it with me.

This editorial won first place in the personal essay category of the Charleston Writing Competition.