it's kinda funny how life can change, can flip 180 in a matter of days

i still remember what it felt like when my family and i first moved to virginia from california. i was only around ten years old, but i remember feeling like everything was just... weird. the way the schools were all indoor. (my schools in california had classrooms that opened directly to the outside. hallways, for the most part, were under the sky.) the weather was weird. (the few times i had seen snow before moving here were on trips where we drove to see it. it got so much colder and so much hotter here.) the people were weird. (definitely more arabs than i was used to.) i remember the sheer panic that came over me when we heard that we had gotten into isa. i remember that i thought the school was huge (by the time i graduated it was tiny to the point of suffocation). the only way i could find my class in the mornings was by looking for the pink ice skates with our names on them that were outside the door. every morning i would have a few heart stopping seconds when i would think they were taken down and i would never find my classroom, i would be late, i would get in trouble, and someone would probably talk to me in arabic. i remember waiting in dread the entire day as i counted down the minutes for the arabic lesson to come and pass. the days where we had double arabic still fill me with a horrified sense of panic.

but now i've lived in virginia for more than half of my life. the kids in my class that i felt so apart from have become my oldest friends. fifth grade was a long time ago. there's a feeling of being home associated with these familiar streets, with the greenery that drips from some places and is absent from others, with the diversity of people that live here. a feeling that my ten year old self would never have felt was possible. i haven't been back to california since the move, but sometimes i wonder if any feelings of home still linger there. it's funny how much time can change things. i've known some of my friends for thirteen years. thirteen. my younger self changed schools so often that i never thought i'd be one of those people with friendships that spanned decades, but here i am years later, counting down the days to the wedding of the girl that i remember as wearing headbands and glasses and not really liking when i first met.

*One Love - Blue