I only lived in Naples, Florida for a matter of months, but I loved it there. My dad moved me from Subruban Detroit to Naples just before the end of my junior year. My life got overwhelming and I needed the break. Over time, the break turned into a living situation that I believed to be permanent. I hadn’t lived with my dad since my parents divorced when I was three, so the experience of having a father figure at home was new to me. I wasn’t used to the discipline or his lifestyle, and we fought often. After one of our bigger fights, I ran away.
The decision of me running away was untimely. A hurricane was expected to hit the area the next morning. My friend, Aaron, told me I could stay at his house until the storm passed. Two days and over fifty missed calls from my dad later, I thought enough time had passed that everything would be okay between us and I decided to go back home.
The return was anything but welcome. The skin between his eyes wrinkled while he screamed at me for being worried sick while I was gone. The lecture ended with his final statement, “You’re leaving on a plane to Michigan on Saturday. You start class at Boarding School on Monday.” I later found out an ulterior motivation for this rash decision; he had already accepted a job back in Michigan starting the following month.
At first, I didn’t quite understand his decision for sending me to a boarding school. It was saying to me that my parents were giving up on me. As my flight descended into Detroit, I felt such a resentment for my father for shipping me right back to the place where I couldn’t breathe, the place that I, only a couple months prior, was trying to be as far away from as humanly possible.
I spent one night home with my mom before driving four hours north into the thick forests and through the sand dune mountains to a small city situated on Lake Michigan called Glen Arbor. This city was home to the small and very expensive boarding school where I would be spending my senior year of highschool.
We arrived in the area when the sky was black and the fall air was crisp to the point of stinging. The last few miles with the brights on, driving slow, and looking out for dear, my mom became a garbage pail for all of my sins. I confessed everything I’ve done wrong, trying to give good reason to myself why this could be what it’s come to. That night I stayed at a hotel with my mom and I was unable to sleep. I was so nervous about the inevitable conclusion that would unfold tomorrow morning before my eyes. I remember falling asleep around four a.m. basking in the blue glow from the tv.
My mom and I went out to breakfast at the Bluebird in Leland, a place we used to go when I was a little girl while on vacation. The drive to the school was a short one. The hidden driveway snuck up on us off the country road and was lined with a thick pine tree forest that seemed to stretch forever. The forest opened up a quarter mile down the driveway to reveal an area with a few large buildings.
The campus was sprinkled with the first golden leaves of fall and was much more beautiful than I had thought. The Crystal River ran through the property, winding around the dorms and by the main hall and eventually flowing into Lake Michigan a short distance down the beach. The beach overlooked the Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Manitou Islands and on a clear day, even the shore of Wisconsin. The buildings all resembled cabins and reminded me of the summer camp I went to when I was younger.
My mom helped me situate my belongings in my room until the students were done with their day of class and when I was expected to join in for “footsteps”, a mandatory after-school daily activity. That day’s plans were to canoe on the river into Lake Michigan to look at a shipwreck.
I was introduced to the 60 students who would be my family for the rest of the year that afternoon. Footsteps that day was alright, I bonded with the girl I shared the canoe with through our both being terrible at canoeing and her filling me in on everyone. After we got tipped into the lake and had to be rescued and taken to shore, she took me for a cigarette with two other senior girls. These three girls, who I would become a fourth to, were basically the “it” senior girls who everyone respected and feared. By the end of the year, the cliques faded and everyone became like a family, but for the first semester, these girls were my best friends.
Im a strong believer in the saying “everything happens for a reason” and the experience of being sent to boarding school just strengthened my belief. It’s strange to think how an experience that completely hit me by surprise turned out to be one of the best in my life. It allowed me to grow as a person and grow to love people who otherwise I would have never met. Since I have graduated, I realize the importance of those first few days because they were the beginning of my new life.