Many people know that a big part of being a military kid is the constant moves from one place to the next. Every time we leave a place, we also are leaving our friends behind. While most people eventually grow accustomed to the constant coming and going, I have yet to do so, because I've only moved twice.
But even then when I moved, I moved from a smaller town, where not many people leave, to a school that not many people left from. So as a result, I've been used to leaving, but I never really thought about when people would leave me. This was a big change when I moved to SHAPE. For the people who don’t know, SHAPE is in Belgium, so automatically almost everyone here is military. You would think that since it's now my fourth year at SHAPE I would be used to people leaving. However, it never actually occurred to me. All of my friends (except for Cat, who moved last winter) moved over the summer. So when they left, it was not the biggest change for me, compared to some. For my one friend who moved during the school year, I still regularly talk to her, so it doesn't feel like she's gone.
But soon that’ll all change for me. My best friend will be already gone by the time this article is posted; for me, it's in four days. It still seems surreal. She got the news a month before but didn’t want to tell people until the week of. She even had her house packed before she told people. So because of that, I couldn’t talk it out with people, and if we ever did talk, we said that she was taking a vacation.
While it's not a bad thing to not talk about your move until right before, it's just harder to do, because moving across the world or even the next town over is a big change. Some people need to take the time to just think about what’s going to happen, while some people, like me, just need to talk to someone about it. But however you do it, don’t forget about your friends. It’s a big change for them too.