Walls, windows, a roof, all things that houses have in common, but what houses lack from a home is a loving family. I have always felt I truly lived in a home because I grew up with two parents that loved and cared for me unconditionally. Growing up I also saw that there are people not as fortunate as I have been. People who can only call their place of living a house or an apartment because they did not have the family to fit the label of a home. I always thought my peers grew up like me, but my perspective changed when I met my best friend.
I have a best friend who I met when I was in sixth grade and she was in seventh. I soon realized our only difference was she had less of a relationship with her dad who she lived with and I had close relationships with my parents. Hanging out with me and my family all the time, she soon became a part of my family. She called my home her home too which she never did about her actual house. Throughout middle school and high school my best friend and I built an unbreakable bond and she built a relationship with my parents that was better than the one she had with her own.
I was taught a saying from a volleyball coach that went, “you are your truest self at home”. I one hundred percent agree with this saying because you can pretend and put up walls to the rest of the world, but at the end of the day your truest self will always appear when you feel at home. The comfort of home can be any place at any time as long as you have people you consider family with you. The furthest from home people feel is not always because they are not living in the same house, but because they are apart from the people they love. For example students going to college far away from their families tend to get homesick at one point or another. These students do not get homesick because they miss their old city, but because they miss the people they love. Another example is military personnel who get back from a deployment and get the biggest welcome homes from their families .
I have lived in the same house since I was two years old, but I could never have called it the home I do without my family and the friends who became a part of my family. Many people can think the best looking house or the most expensive house will be their forever home, but without meaningful people around you it will only be an empty building. I know I will always be at home when I am around my family and the people I love because home is where the heart is.
