Throughout my lifetime, I have been one of those people who couldn't seem to stick to one singular activity. I have participated in multiple sports and clubs but nothing ever really stuck with me. While I do feel that moving plays a large part in this, it also comes down to the fears I have had about continuing the activity knowing that I would be moving and the changes that would potentially come with it. What if I'm not as good as I was with my old team? What if I'm not liked? What if these new people are mean and I fall out of love with this activity? These are just some of my common thoughts and fears about participating in activities while moving.
For the record, I had been involved with soccer, gymnastics, girl scouts, and softball, to name a few. As I had mentioned, however, none of these stuck with me.
One of the moments in my life which drastically impacted me was between my move from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania in 2018: my family's final move. I was 11, turning 12, and had done competitive gymnastics for about three years at this point. Even though I started the sport late, I had advanced really fast because I was in the Xcel program that was offered. Before I moved, I was under the assumption that I would continue to grow with this sport but I was very wrong. When we finally left Rhode Island and officially came to Pennsylvania for good, we didn't move into our house until a month and a half, and at that point, so much work had to be done on the house and I was starting school soon that it slipped my mind.
I spent the entire summer without conditioning, and I was eager to get back into the gym. This got pushed back further and further when I began school. I got involved with my middle school's theater program, which took up a lot of my time and further delayed my return to the gym.
By the time I tried gymnastics again, it had nearly been 11 months since I had last competed in the sport. Sure, I could've tried it again but I knew in my heart that I would need to put so much work into it and I would feel too behind. To me, that ship had sailed.
To this day, I still wonder what my life would have been like if I continued with gymnastics and if I had started it back up again sooner. If I had continued with the sport, I wouldn't have been able to explore theater in the way I had and I wouldn't have made the amazing friends I have today. I really like the life I have today, and I couldn't imagine it any other way. It's not like I got rid of sports forever, I joined my school's diving team! While it isn't exactly gymnastics, and I'm still improving a lot, I'm proud that I tried something new and was still able to combine the skills of gymnastics with a whole new sport.
As military kids, we go through so many changes, whether we like them or not, but changes don't have to be scary! We just have to understand that everything happens for a reason and the changes that we go through shape us as people.