My life has taken many wild and unexpected turns. Every day brings surprises that nudge me a little in one direction or another. These surprises are what I live for. I can’t wait to wake up in the morning to see what the day will bring. Everyday something different falls out of the sky and onto the road that is my life. Granted, some are just small pebbles that I barely feel hitting me on the head. Other times, however, they are gigantic boulders that block my current path and make me build new roads around the them. These ‘boulders’ represent those pivotal events in life that come out of nowhere and change everything. I’ve had a few boulders myself. Luckily, I was able to adapt and my life has never been better for it. The following “boulder-encounter” was unexpected, but is the main contributing factor to my happiness and outlook on life today.

I was spending the summer before high school with my dad in Tyler, Texas. Having spent a dismal two years in Palestine Middle School (PMS), I didn’t look fondly toward my high school experience. The constant name-calling of “faggot” and “queer” didn’t provide for a healthy and enjoyable experience. Nonetheless, I felt doomed to a life constricted to the boundaries of East Texas. My dad had recently moved to Tyler because of work. My mom, my three sisters and I still lived in Palestine, except for summers. Almost everyone I knew grew up in Palestine and intended on dying in Palestine. At least that’s the way it seemed at the time.

“Depressed” is putting it lightly, if you’re wondering how I felt. Instead of building close friendships with students my age like other “normal” kids; I built a wall. I built an emotional fortress around me to shield myself from cruelty that came from kids my age and even adults. It was a period of my life I refer to as the “dark ages.” It was refreshing to escape from Palestine. I claimed no real friends and held no affection for my hometown, so this summer in Tyler was my temporary freedom from bigotry and torture that plagued my life up to that point.

The summer was uneventful until the last week. The much dreaded time to head back to Palestine came. The painful drive back to Palestine was filled with emotion. My head filled with all the potential horrors that awaited me in high school. We finally arrived. My mom greeted us, told us to hop in her car, then stated that we were going on a surprise trip. After a couple of hours on the road we drove into a town called Keller, right outside of North Fort-Worth. We drove up to a dark closed building and parked in the empty driveway. When we asked what this was all about, she explained that we were moving and that that dark building was my high school. That night I went to bed in my new home, a small apartment across the street from Keller High School.

Looking back, it sounds crazy for my mother to move all of us without prior warning. However, she had many reasons for doing what she did. Many I knew at the time, and others I’m just know learning about. Whatever her reasons were, it was a change that came out of nowhere. I didn’t even have an inkling that I would be moving that summer. That next morning was freshman orientation. Still bewildered, I sat in the new auditorium and slowly realized that this was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I turned out to be right.

Keller’s open-mindedness and appreciation for diversity turned out to be exactly what I needed. I spent those four years in high school making up for everything I’d missed out on in Palestine. A whole world had been waiting for me, while I had been suffocating in a small ultra-coservative town that overtly discouraged progressive thinking. It was a teacher in Keller that took interest in me and encouraged me to be an exchange student. She was one of the only teachers in my education that had a profound impact on my life. In Keller, I felt more at home than I ever had before.

From time to time I go back to Palestine to visit my grandparents. Every time I wonder how my life would have been different had I stayed there. I would probably be going to the local community college and working at a local restaurant like many of my peers. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I do know that it’s just not me.

I thank the heavens for that boulder and my mom taking action when she did.

Brent Paxton is a junior international relations and political science double major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].