2024/Cedrick-

Being a military child is pretty fun if I'm being honest. It’s so sad and depressing as every other military child makes it. Sure moving all the time gets repetitive, depressing, and boring. Making friends and leaving them in the next five or six months is demoralizing and cruises the hopes of making friends with people that last.

But, at the same time that’s the fun part. Meeting new people and going to new places is always fun. The thought of going somewhere exotic is exhilarating, going to a different country or city or state or anything just gives a breath of fresh air. Personally, it makes me feel like a new season of Fortnite. There’s now a new map, new loot, and new skins. It’s just fun and makes me want to explore and see what’s so different about this new place compared to the old one.

Moving to Okinawa was an exceptionally hard move for me. Especially since it was my freshman year of high school, I made all these friends just to leave them. I left everything behind basically. My friends that I’ve met since middle school, all the connections we made, and all my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I’ve never been outside the U.S. up until that point in my life. There was an insane amount of stress and fear moving around in my brain. It felt like my head was on fire 24/7. When we arrived in mainland Japan we were scheduled to fly to Okinawa in the next 3 to 4 hours. However, that didn’t happen. There was a typhoon swarming over Okinawa; because of that, we couldn’t go to Okinawa. We had to stay in a TLF, which wasn’t the best experience. It was moldy, dirty, and all around unsanitary.

Despite all of this the move wasn’t that bad when I arrived. The weather was beautiful, it had a welcoming heat that was exhilarating at the same time. Living in Okinawa puts another viewpoint on life and how I want to live it. Leaving the United States gave me a new interest in life and that interest is traveling and trying new things. Reasons like that are why I love being a military child and I hope more military children like myself will somehow see the same viewpoint I have when it comes to moving to a different place.