Addy Hogg

Shortly after my fourteenth birthday, it felt like the entire universe was holding me back. I was growing up and apart from all the things I’d become so comfortable with. I made a home in my mind. I became familiar with each of the wrinkles in my sheets, found comfort within the dent that formed in my mattress. I felt as if I was floating above my body, watching as it melted onto my bed, unmoving. Like standstill traffic on the interstate, watching the lane of cars beside me speed by in the opposite direction.

Without the excitement I imagined that I would feel my entire life, freshman year began. A small school in the far corner of a large county, it was considered the best in the area, which wasn’t saying much. I had been going there since second grade. At this point, I seemed to have drifted among all the friend groups and close-knit cliques. Everyone had their people, filtered into some category of the small-town hierarchy. Then there was me, staring down at my feet as they carried me through purgatory. Everyday at lunch, the tables seemed to empty as people swapped to virtual school and the hallways seemed barren even during the rush between classes. For eight hours a day, four times a week, I was silent. I floated around the hallways as a ghost of who I used to be, searching for her in the silence of my peers. Everything seemed to stop and slow down as my days felt long and restless. 

When brown leaves were swept away in the stream and life returned to the trees, my elective changed and I walked into my arts and crafts class. A few weeks of quiet was disrupted by boxes on my table. My teacher whizzed around the room for spring cleaning as I watched in horror. I looked desperately for somewhere else to hide. Then, I was invited over to a table by two girls I had known for years. It felt like for the first time, in a long time, I had a place to stay. I forgot about my table and let it fill with clutter. Within them, our hushed laughter, the smiles hidden beneath our masks, I began to grow into someone new, unrecognizable to the person I was leaving behind. From a dark period came a light one, a yearning for something more.  

Just before my fifteenth birthday, it felt like the universe had fallen into my hands. Most of my room was packed into boxes and stacked cautiously in the trunk of my mom’s car, with clothes busting out of the seams in my suit case. We pulled into a place I was slowly becoming familiar with, Indian Springs School. I was greeted by friendly faces and handed an envelope that held my keys. Once everything had been settled into my room, I stepped outside and let the August sun soak into my skin. Sat on the grass with people I had never met before, I started over with my hands held tightly together. There was something special within them and I wasn’t going to lose it.

In the absence of words and my love-sick solitude, I became someone who finds peace in the quiet. I found myself dancing under the soft kitchen lights in my grandma’s kitchen. Walking through the woods with only myself, the earth beneath my muddied sneakers, and a comfort in knowing that just across the land-bridge, the place I’ve yearned for my whole life waits for me. I became someone who is hopeful for the things I want and allows myself to want more because even when what I yearn for slips through my fingers, I can always return to the sweet simplicity of the things that led me here. They’ll be there, and if someday they leave, I now know that I can stay.