Moving on

I arrived in Princeton, N.J., on October 26, 2001. It was an adventure at first. I thought it would be nice to have a change. Though I loved my friends from Massachusetts, I was sure I was mature enough to quickly adapt to a new town, a new school and new friends.

A year later, I’ve realized that I’ve misjudged my people skills. I’ve realized that it’s even hard for outgoing people to replace their friends. It took me a good seven years of living in my old town, Framingham, Mass., to secure friendships. To find people who I could talk to, who would talk to me. We understood each other. The last time we were all together was two weeks before I moved. They threw a surprise party for me at my ex-boyfriend Josh’s house. (We were on good terms because we knew it would be impossible to have a long-distance relationship.)

At the time, I thought everyone was overreacting to my move. “We’ll miss you,” was the overwhelming catchphrase. Yet we were still able to enjoy ourselves. It was too soon to for the idea of my permanent absence to hit. Personally, I was excited. What fun was it to stay in the same town your entire life? My friend Scotty asked me if I would miss Framingham. I told her, “Of course,” when I was in fact exhilarated at the thought of moving to Princeton.

At the end of the evening, I was showered with gifts, the most important being a memory book in which each person included a questionnaire about him or herself.

Then I was gone, whisked away by my parents to the armpit of the country, a strange place where the rich and the poor are separated by everything but proximity. I couldn’t warm to the idea of living there, 400 miles away from everything I knew. It hit me two weeks later that I didn’t know any of these people. Their Abercrombie clothes were worn by my friends, too, but that’s where the similarities ended. I was lonely.

The remainder of my freshman year was tough. I corresponded with my friends via long nights of AOL Instant Messages, hour-long telephone calls and pages of writing on whimsical stationary. I kept my distance from people at my new school not because I was a snob, but because I didn’t feel welcome.

When my family and I went to Boston, my old friends met me. I wish I could say it was like old times, but it wasn’t. Yeah, we had fun, but we were older. Now there were memories I talked about, that my friends didn’t understand. They name-dropped like crazy about people I hadn’t seen in a long time or didn’t know. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind returning to New Jersey at the end of the week. I realized that I had people to look forward to in New Jersey, despite what I had formerly believed. Now, six months later, I’m not so lonely anymore. I will always miss my friends in Massachusetts, but I can safely say that I overcame the stage in my life where I was afraid to move on no worse for wear. 

Cindy Hong, a student at Princeton High School in Princeton, N.J., won $100 for this article! Do you have a story to share? Send it to our Teen Writing Contest at www.nextSTEPmagazine.com/writing for your chance to win $$!

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