My mother didn’t have one hair out of place, each of her fingers was perfectly painted a soft pink color that matched the blush caressing her cheeks. Her veil lightly fluttered in the breeze from the shuddering fan in the corner. The early morning light shining through the rainbow-colored stained glass windows landed softly on her skin making her look as though she was aglow, radiating light against the dark wooden pillars of the old chapel.

My mom looked beautiful, but this wasn’t who she is.

Her chocolate-brown hair that was tucked so perfectly into a graceful braided updo would be a ratty, tangled mess the moment she got into the car. Her perfectly manicured fingernails would soon be uneven, cracked and showing their natural color. Her makeup — so smooth it was as if she had been airbrushed — would soon be splotchy.

That is who my mother was.

This was the second time she has gotten married ... in the past six months, the twentieth time she’s been engaged, and the fourteenth wedding dress she has worn in her life. Pretty soon we will be in a sleek, black car moving to who-knows-where to start our new life with her new husband. I’ll have to make new friends, go to a new school, fall into a new routine. “Another chance,” my mother would chirp in her steady, high voice, “an opportunity to start fresh, to be whoever you want to be,” just like she had fourteen times before.

For the seventeen years I’ve been alive, I’ve never stayed in one place longer than six months. A new life, a new me, a new chance, twice a year at least. Sure, I make do, I find friends, and get to know teachers and even a boyfriend or two, or three, or four. But in reality, it’s not as fresh as it seems.

We’ve made it into the car now, my mother’s hair is blowing wildly as the wind from the open window surges through the car, and her nail polish has chipped off into little flakes of pink now scattered around the dusty floor of the car, just as I knew it would.

“Cheer up, buttercup,” my mom shouts at me over the sound of the wind flapping through the window, “tomorrow’s a new day!”

I look out the window, trying to drown out the sound of my mother’s joyful cheers as the car accelerates, faster and faster, until we’re flying down the highway. I think about cutting my hair, how it’s getting too long, how I can see strands of my blonde hair flying in front of me as I watch the skyline of my last home shrink and shrink until it vanishes into nothing.

The longest I ever stayed somewhere was in Boulder my freshman year of high school. My mom‘s 12th husband was my favorite, even though he was hardly ever around. Bob was a real estate salesman, he gave us a comfortable life. I had found myself content. The girl across the street was nice, she would sit next to me in our lunchroom with grey cement walls that made us feel like we were in a prison cell. We were complete opposites. I’m tall, she barely reached five feet. I had light hair and only wore dark clothes, and she had dark hair and wore only light clothes. I did really well in my classes and wasn’t in any clubs. She was captain of every team, club, organization and everything in between, but never had time for school work. We would have the same conversation everyday,

“Why don’t you join the lacrosse team? We always have so much fun!” she would say to me, mentioning a different club or team each time.

“It’s not really my thing.” I would tell her. Every single day.

She would smile — her brown eyes beginning to sparkle — and shake her head. Her stringy black hair would flip back and forth by her collarbones, and she would say

“You’re a weird girl, Alex. I don’t understand you sometimes.”

I really don’t know how or why we were such good friends, but she was the closest thing I ever had to family.

I loved our house there. The front door was a rich, maroon color that matched the plush carpet right inside. A massive sparkling crystal chandelier greeted you the minute you stepped through the door. Our house always smelled like freshly baked cookies, warm and sweet. We had a routine. I would wake up, check to see if the car was in the garage — my mom had the tendency to drunkenly leave the car wherever she took it on her wild adventure the night before — and ride my rusty old Razor scooter down the street to school. At night I would come home to my mom asleep on the couch, the light from the tv screen flashing across her face, her fingers stained with orange Cheeto dust reaching for a can of soda on the table next to her head. Except for the days I didn’t. Sometimes, I would come home, dragging my decrepit scooter behind me, to see my mother was nowhere to be found. A few hours later, I’d hear her stumble through the door, stagger up the stairs, ramming herself into the railing as she went, breathing heavily like she had just been chased by a bear. I’d see her pass my room, her hair bent in all sorts of directions, black smudges beneath her eyes from makeup she had sweat off. I felt like I should have said something, but I knew she noticed me on the days I dragged myself up those stairs, looking awful too, so I kept my mouth shut.

My mother was always eager to change things up. It’s like she would go looking for an opportunity to uproot us, to send us off to “make a new life.” There was no reason for her to want to leave. Until she met Larry, the man who would become husband number 13.

The day she decided to leave Bob was the worst day of my life.

“Oh cheer up, buttercup.” she said while sweeping up the blue shards of a broken bowl that I had just thrown on the white and black checkered tile in our kitchen.

I was speechless, I couldn’t think of any words, or even sounds to convey how devastated I was. I swallowed the gumball sized lump I felt in my throat, raised my eyes to meet my mother’s solemn face.

“I can’t believe you.” I said

I turned on my heel and walked straight out the door toward the blue playground set across the street.

You’d think I’d be a professional at making a new name for myself, having to do it so often. But every time I’m in the car heading off to a new place, I feel a knot form in my stomach, just as it is forming right now. It grows and grows as the car zooms down the highway, growing faster as we accelerate. I know by this time tomorrow I will be like a fish out of water, frantically searching for something to help me put an end to the terror of the unknown. I’ll be feeling lost, like I’ve been sent to the bottom of the ocean. I’ll be searching for someone to be my companion, someone to make the loneliness subside.  I’ll be waiting to see my mom become bored with Mark, lucky Mr. 14, and watch her find husband number 15, so we can start this cycle all over again. I wish we would slow down. I wish the car wouldn’t move so fast. I wish tomorrow wasn’t going to be a new day.