2025/Skyler-

Being a military child is interesting. I had lived in Maryland my entire life and whenever I moved, I only moved twenty minutes away from my old house. That was how my life had been up until 2019 when my mom and my step dad got married. A year after they got married, in the summer of 2020 we got orders to Okinawa, Japan. I was terrified. I was about to be in 8th grade and I had been at the same schools my entire life, going to middle school with the same people I’ve known since kindergarten. We were planning to leave in February 2021. I had to pick up and leave everything I had ever known. It was really hard to get used to moving and meeting new people, these people were used to moving around their whole life and making new friends easily. I was the opposite, I didn’t make friends until 9th grade. Those friends became the closest people to me very fast. I’m a senior now and only 2 of my friends from freshman year are still here. Having people I'm so close with moving all the time and knowing I will probably never see them again is extremely hard. It’s been 4 years and I’m still not used to being a military child and I don’t think I ever will get used to it.