The girl had been accustomed to change for her whole life. Change is what happened when she moved from Cleveland, the place where she was born, to Boston. There were no memories from this place, except a shore covered by fog near her apartment. This was also the place she made the leap from a four-legged crawl to a more dignified two-legged wobble. Boston required her to grow tough skin. The savory fish sandwiches on the Boston Harbor were a delicacy to people and seagulls alike. After ending up empty handed multiple times after the sandwich was rudely swooped from her small hands, she learned that crying would not bring the food back. A lesson hard-learned.

As the girl’s family picked up their life to the next conquest, Pittsburgh, she had pocketed valuable life lessons. Yet nothing would prepare her for the metallic beast, the subway. The loud roar as it approached shook her to the core, and thoughts like, “I’m pretty close to the edge. What if I somehow trip on that piece of trash to my right? Would I have the arm strength to lift myself up? I’ve never even done a pull up,” seemed to loom in the back of her head. A year later, she had attained an ease in using this transportation and would feel a childish sense of superiority when first timers would ask her how to reach point B from point A.

Her family’s circumstance brought on a more drastic scene change across the Atlantic Ocean in Bucharest, Romania. There is a common expression that goes, “You live, and you learn”. At this point, the girl had adapted the phrase to “I have lived in a lot of places, and I have learned a lot.” Yet, one thing she did not learn was to not pet stray cats on the street. As she held her bleeding wrist on the way to the hospital, she watched the tall grass and dark concrete apartments pass by. At the hospital, she immediately became aware of the cracked floors, old machinery, and the disgruntled people in the long lines. The flaws of this country sunk in, yet she still loved it. She loved it for its collectivism and the people’s love for home-made wine and dancing.

In 2020, she woke up one morning in the same bed she had gone to sleep in in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. However, she was not in the same place. The world she had woken up to was one of panic and uncertainty. People’s frowns of concern were now hidden by masks. The news broadcasters were repeating the name of an invisible monster that was terrorizing the world. This time, she did not have to put her belongings inside of a box to move. She simply woke up, and life was different. Perhaps in this place she would not be able to learn a lesson. Instead, her acquired knowledge from her travels and experiences would now help her navigate this foreign terrain.