300 Words About Me

My name is Caius, I am sixteen years old. I was born on April 22 of the year 2000. I have moved around a lot as a child, I have lived in Mexico, Canada, and the Middle East. Apart from english, I know bits of french, common arabic dialect, and spanish. I am lucky to have a mother and father who actually care for me, and a brother.

I begun my journey traveling to Mexico when I was three months old. I lived there for four years then moved back to Canada. I lived in Canada for another four years then moved back to Mexico for another two. We lived in the same city and went to the same school and ate at some of the same restaurants. Something about the place just kept calling us back. After the two years, we moved to the small island kingdom of Bahrain, just off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

I was ten years old by now and was beginning to fully become aware of the serious cultural conflicts around me as well as the varying degrees of culture. In Bahrain, I realized that cultural hierarchy and many caste systems still existed in today’s modern world. I also discovered that there are still very concrete forms of subtle slavery in the world. I hung out with the extremely wealthy and glimpsed the extremely poor almost everyday. I realized the power and influence humans have on others and how we all know the gross mentality that plagues the castes systems and how poorly some people are treated in these systems. But we brush to the side or try to hide it from view as if were a pile of dirt.

I moved back to Canada at age eleven, after having spent one year in the middle east. The Arab Spring had begun and we decided we did not want to stay to watch it unfold. We moved back to Canada where I finished middle school and began high school. We lived there for five years, the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place.

This is where I learned what home is. This is where I learned about friendships and experienced an almost normal life. No other place I had ever lived before had I been so attached to than this one. I had never really had friends in my life like I did then. I actually had best friends, and lots of them. I actually was familiar with the city. My city. I did almost everything there was to do there. It was all so familiar and comforting. Then it became boring. I was so used to switching routines that after staying in one place for so long, I missed being uncomfortable. I wanted to leave, even though I had everything I ever wanted. A great city, fun times, lots of great friends, a great home and school. But I wanted something else. So when my family asked if we wanted to move I agreed.

That’s when I thought I made a mistake. Right before we left I realized everything I would leave behind. The familiarity. The comfort. Friends. People I had grown up with for half decade. My last memory of my best friend is leaving him crying on the steps of a coffee shop where we worked. On the plane I became very depressed and angry with myself for being so blind to what I had.

When we arrived in the Dominican I realized it had been my sixth move. Leaving my old familiar home, for my new strange one. Starting school, to be fair, really sucked. Like really sucked. My spanish was good, but it wasn’t Dominican spanish. What I spoke and what I heard were two different languages. I remember one day deciding I hated it here. That was the day I ate lunch alone. The first time in my entire life where I had eaten at school alone. I had found a couch upstairs where there was no one and I sat and ate alone. It was one of the weirdest feeling I have ever experienced. I had never sat alone. I had seen other kids sitting alone before and always wondered why they did that. Why didn’t they come and join us? Now I knew how they felt. They were afraid. They were new. I was new.

Within the next week things improved at an alarming rate. I was making friends, I knew my classes, I didn’t eat alone and I was playing sports. I was becoming comfortable again. But I knew it would take time. But I realized I could wait. Being uncomfortable helps you grow. I want to grow as a person, so that’s what I’ll do. I am Caius. And I am uncomfortable.