When I moved here, I was only 12. I was just about to become a teenager and was just finding my bearings in life. Things were definitely changing for me much faster than I would have liked, but unfortunately, as a child, I really had no say in most of it. When I moved here, I spent a lot of my time hoping and dreaming that my dad would get another job back where we used to live and I would rejoin in the life that I had lived for 13 years. Unfortunately, that's not the way it turned out.

School started and I wasn't very outgoing. I was still dreaming of what I had left instead of what I could have where I was. I spent so much of my time thinking about what had gone wrong that I missed out on a lot of good friendships. After two years of making a meager little group of friends who were also new to the town, I began to notice that hoping my life would change wasn't getting me anywhere. I began to learn more about the people I was around every day. I began to think more about what I could be doing with my life and started to make a change. I quickly gathered a larger group of friends, as well as the ones I had already made. So, for the next two years, I joined clubs, made as many friends as possible and made a life for myself.

Two days ago came the news. Now that I had forgotten about any difference between Wylie and my hometown, I've been told I'm moving again. It was back to my dreamland, Oklahoma. My first reaction was to be ecstatic, but then I began to think. I had just gotten a piano teacher I liked. I was finally getting a letter jacket for varsity soccer. I had made the best friend I think I've ever had and I had learned so much about myself. I almost felt I was leaving more than I had left the first time the horrific news had come four years before. Now I'm at another tumultuous time in my life, the time where I make the transition to being a licensed driver, with a lot of freedom being dangled in front of my face along with the keys to the car.

I guess the point of the story is that I learned a big lesson here. I don't think I realized I was learning any kind of lesson until just lately. I was blind to the fact that I had self-corrected my lifestyle to get more out of my time here. I now feel like I'll be leaving a lot, which is a sad feeling, but I also know that there will be a lot of people sad to see me go, and knowing that I have been a part of people's lives makes me feel blessed. Trying to put this lesson into a short moral is hard, but I guess it goes back to something I read that really changed my life. I learned that if you muddle through life, being mad that a rose has thorns, you won't have any time to be happy that thorns have roses.

Sincerely a devoted listener,

Jennifer McCoy


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