I hate the question, “Where are you from?” As a Military child, I never knew how to answer this question. Do I tell them where I was born? Where have I recently moved from? Where are my parents from? The list goes on. I define courage as my ability to attend three different high schools and move again during my senior year. Always being the new kid got tiring and annoying and sometimes I just want to blend in. Yet, when school counselors meet me they say, “You are so brave.” Is it brave that we move across states sometimes from overseas? It was just a routine cycle for me, missing out on lifelong friendships and trying to keep close contact with friends halfway across the country. Fitting my whole life in as little U-Haul boxes as I can.
I know my experience as a military child is shared by other military families but courage and loneliness are the same. It’s getting lost in the hallways of a foreign school never truly feeling like I have a home but it’s in those tough moments I find this so-called courage. Military children are supposed to be resilient yet to be truthful I sometimes feel like a coward. The hard truth is that we don’t make friends easily. I prefer not to make too close friends because it makes saying goodbye harder. Courage is sometimes losing ourselves along with packing boxes and the smell of burning tape.
I never viewed myself as a courageous person but being a Muslim-American it shocks people how you can be military affiliated, it wasn’t expected. I usually was one of the only Muslims in my school and it takes a lot of courage to wear my hijab. This proud feeling of my parents’ sacrifice allows me to hold my head high. Their military interconnectedness exposed me to various cultures different from my own but the courage to learn about how we are the same. I am connected to every military family because we share the struggle of the sting of Sharpie markers and those tiny U-Haul boxes. So no, I don’t know how to answer the question, “Where are you from?” but I can tell them about the courage it takes not to have an answer.