My intense disliking of road trips began when I was seven years old, when I woke in the morning on the floor of an empty pale yellow room—no longer my empty yellow room—and walked downstairs through the empty house, through the empty foyer, and into our van, completely filled to the brim with boxes and bags and coolers.

I was moving. My childhood home was gone forever. As I sat, peering out the window at the fleeting buildings passing by, as I knew that I would never see my home again.

And so we sat. The ride was an agony for an overactive child. I’ve never had the ability to sit perfectly still. I always bounce my legs, swipe through the air with my fingers, play with my hair; always play with my hair. I felt like was in a bird in a cage, stuffed haphazardly into circus cart, and completely surrounded by the remnants of my old life.

It was not a fun day.

The ride lasted for nine hours. When we finally arrived in South Carolina, I still couldn’t weep for joy, even as my anxious feet touched the rich earth. I could never feel joy. My life was still up north. My family was still up north; my friends were still up north.

We tried to go up to visit my family as often as possible. Each one was thoroughly planned beforehand, and the van was packed with enough supplies to last us a week. It wasn’t the same; I wasn’t the same Early in the morning, before the sun would rise, the family would get up and throw ourselves in the car. We’d drive the whole day through, stopping only for gas. Time seemed to slow down as my siblings and I watched movie after movie, finishing a book, starting another, and trying to sleep. Most of the rides I would be stuck in a sideways, cramped world, stuck in a haze between slumber and consciousness, functioning just enough to know that I was uncomfortable and annoyed with the bickering of my brother and sister in the background.

The road trips were expensive and long, as we could never go up and see only one part of the family at a time. When we were up north, our family seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense our presence; we were dragged all over New York each time we made it up there.

Even with the craziness of seeing everyone, the individual visits never lasting more than two days; I loved being back up in my home. I loved the cool, clear air; I loved the lack of humidity; I loved the snow. The winters down south were horrible. The leaves would brown without a fantastic display of color and wilt to the ground. The trees would turn a horrible shade of black. The grass would brown. The sky was gray. Yet the tempters never dropped below 50 degrees, not nearly as cold, as I liked. Ironically it all represented me pretty well.

I feel whole again once I’m up north. Probably because it was the last place that I was truly whole, not the broken girl I am now. Wherever we go, people surround me my own age. I’m lucky that way. I had my best friends so close after as long as a year apart, we were inseparable. We’re so excited to see each other. We’d roam around outside, goof around inside, since I was the oldest out of my siblings and cousins, we’d take care of the little ones, and do basically everything we could fit in to a weeks span while the adults talked.

The trips never felt long once they ended. We’d be back down south before we knew it. I’d feel like I’d been ripped away from home, my heart torn from my chest, and plopped back into the world of “y’all” ‘s and “bless your heart‘s.”

After these trips I’d feel even further away than before, I’m even farther away from my family, and myself. The visits up north are less frequent. I can feel myself slipping further, and further away, from myself, but I keep going, because if I stop for even a minute, I would become consumed, by the pain, by the memories, by everything that has changed me; I miss the life, I miss the feelings, , I miss my old life not this new mixed up world, I miss the pieces of myself that have been stolen from me.