How to Move to Another State for Teens

The Friend Disclosure

The actual moving is not the problem. Yes, yes, it is annoying to pack up all your things into heavy cardboard boxes, pack it into the moving truck, drive to the destination, unpack the moving truck, and re-organize your room when you reach your destination, but if that was all you had to do when you move, you would be set.

However, if you are an average, social human being, you have friends. Friends that aren't coming with you. Friends that will slowly forget you until you are nothing but a blur on their memory.

I find that the hardest part of moving is what I refer to as the Informative Stage. The point in your move, and prep up to the move, when you have to reveal to your friends that in six months or so, there will no longer, be anymore random shopping trips, library raids, and staying up past your bedtimes at a sleepover. There will be no more crashing at their house to go to a convention, lifesaving trips to the nail salon, or fancy dinners that you know you can't afford. Instead, you just stand there awkwardly and tell your friends that you are moving far away, really soon, and you're gonna miss them.

Yes, that part is hard. I understand. But, what really kills me is the reaction. When you tell your best friends, they cry. When you tell your good friends, they cry. When you tell your okay friends, they cry. Everyone cries, which makes you cry. 

Coping with all this is mandatory. You may not like it, but it is important that you look on the positive side of things. Spend more time with your friends right now, plan your new bedroom, and doing things you like to do are important.

I am moving away a little over a year from now. In the coming year, I want to spend more time with my friends, and I have already started planning my room. It is going to be a brown beige color with a kelly green accent wall. I will have a wall of photos of my friends, a gray carpet, with succulents lining the walls. This kind of thinking has been magic for me, because my friends are everything. 

But so far, the method that has worked best for me is putting myself out there. Making new friends, even a year ahead of time had been so important to me. Just knowing people there is amazing, and the whole idea of moving seems less scary and daunting when I know that I have friends there to support me throughout it all, and to help me decorate and build. 

Life can get hard when moving, but really the friend disclosure is the hardest part.