As the Mississippi River rolls into sight, the tears begin to well in my eyes.

“We’re just going to visit like all the other times,” I tell myself. “In a week we’ll be driving right back over the bridge, back into the familiar countryside.”
But that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t going back. Mississippi was no longer my home.

It’s hard adjusting to new life. You have to make new friends at a new school. Learn all new roads and stores. But moving to Texas was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Compared to Mississippi, this is the state of opportunities and no dream is too big. Yet so much is different, and getting used to it takes time. When you’re used to the mall being thirty minutes away and the nearest Walmart on the opposite side of town for thirteen years, it’s almost weird to have outdoor shops with a movie theater right around the corner. When you’re used to more forests than roads, it’s odd not being able to walk out your back door and go for a walk in the woods. When you’re being forced from calm quiet afternoons to traffic that makes you want to ditch the car for a bike, it’s hard to adjust with ease.

Never in a million years would I think that I would be working at an indoor water park instead of the local bowling alley. I wouldn’t believe someone if they told me that I would live in a town with an IMAX theater and a Whole Foods. Yet compared to Clinton, Flower Mound is a blessing.

It’s a blessing because I know that I’ve made lifelong friends here. I’ve discovered my passion of writing and my hatred of geometry. I have learned so much here, but two and a half years later I still cannot figure out why Cross Timbers, Main, and 1171 can’t just share one name. But they were right when they said it: Everything is better in Texas.