The Big Move to an Island in Texas

By Sara Beshai

I was once told that your 20s are your decade of decisions.

This has remained a deep mentality and source of comfort when it comes to explaining why life events are the way they are after graduating college. I’m only 25 years old, yet I have made many decisions. One of the biggest of them is my big move to Galveston.

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, known for its ex-football player neighbors and $8 coffee from one-worded action-verb coffee shops. The community I was most intertwined with was my church. I often spent more time in theology and organized religion than with my friends from school. This wasn’t my parent’s decision or peer pressure, I genuinely wanted to learn more about the morality I was born into. I always have and always will need to know the reason behind the world’s flaws and features.

Although I spent most of my time with other like-minded Christians, art was often my escape and method for understanding perspectives outside my circle. Most of these so-called “secular thoughts” and nuances I discovered when talking to other creative students or singing songs with lyrics that weren’t always pointed to a higher being.

My art, and desire to be a part of the design world, expanded when I went to college (Hook ‘Em baby!). If you are an older generation reading this, you probably know where my story pivots. Like most college students, I became a part of organizations and community circles full of people who had similar upbringings to mine. This exposed me to thousands of human beings and their backgrounds. One person in particular changed my life – Emma.

Emma joined my non-denominational campus ministry at the time (which I never understood the religion’s name, as it is very much a denomination) and we quickly became close friends and roommates. Better yet, sisters in Christ! I had never been in love nor did I know what that feeling felt like, until Emma. She was the complete opposite of me in every attractive and desirable way. She made me feel on top of the world and made me feel at home. Until this point, I had been praying for a gentle, patient, godly man to come into my life and lead me! Emma was nowhere near that, nor was she a man, and I was madly in love.

As you may assume, religion and sexuality are like mixing oil and water. This new discovery changed my entire life’s trajectory. Without trauma dumping, it’s safe to say that I couldn’t have both. I had to pick Emma or the community and moral ideology that was all that I knew. Where my community was, my identity was also. By 21, I had made the most difficult decision of my life, to choose a person over my so-called family. And I couldn’t be happier.

Let’s fast forward to 2023. Emma finally got into the school of her dreams, the University of Texas-Medical Branch to become a Doctor of Occupational Therapy. At this point, Emma was my only friend and I knew this would take a toll on our relationship. Why Galveston? Why not go to a school in a better location? My only connection to Galveston was a trip in the 3rd grade with my uncle and being stung by a jellyfish in brown water. I couldn’t imagine doing long-distance but I sure as hell was not moving to an island.

Emma and I were long-distance for a year and a half, making the drive once a month to each other’s homes. It was hard but worth the drive to touch her hand and feel her lips. I had a financially fulfilling job as a teacher. In some of my fellow teachers, I made the most authentic friends who weren’t tied to an obligation or a spiritual book. I loved what I was doing and I was teaching what I loved.

Being a student in a doctoral program is not for the weak. Emma would often call me crying or stressed out and needing me physically and not just through FaceTime. Although I was making the most money I had ever made in my life, being a teacher – ALSO not for the weak. As a teacher, you work through lunch just to meet 43 deadlines before noon. Imagine giving whatever energy that you have left to your partner through a cellular device. It’s not enough to make a relationship last. We both had an inkling that this long-distance thing wasn’t working out.

I knew it was coming. I knew I needed to move to Galveston. Not just to be with Emma, but to start fresh. I roamed around the city I lived in, nervous that I would be stopped by someone I used to know in my past life. Even the friendships that remained after I left the church were often superficial and awkward as I felt like I had to be the Sara that they knew before. Staying in Austin meant that I couldn’t move on to this next chapter of my life. If I didn’t leave, I’d be prolonging these chains to inauthenticity. It was time to begin again and leave the identity that I held onto for dear life behind.

I left my full-time job and one-bedroom apartment to move to Galveston. What I once thought was a lifeless, underwhelming city has now become the center point of my freedom. I get to live with my best friend and allow myself to be loved for who I am today and who I will be tomorrow. I have fallen in love with Galveston despite my previous assumptions. I can leave my home knowing that there will be a new face out there that is interested in whoever Sara is today. I have friends that are for-lifers and a job that exceeds my dreams of what I wanted to do in life. Home is truly where the heart is and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I think young Sara would be surprised yet in awe of the confident and authentic person she came to be. Galveston is my new beginning, my new chapter, and my home to another 5 years of decisions.