Home
A home can mean different things to different people. It can be a place, a feeling, or even just being in a certain surrounding. Home can even be a church or maybe a cabin, though, everyone identifies it a little different. To me a home is a warm feeling, it is being around people who care and protect me. I do not associate home to one location, my home is whenever I am surrounded by individuals who make me feel like I am special.
When I was a little girl, I lived in an apartment with my mom, dad and little brother, however, my home life was broken, and I was separated from my parents and put into an orphanage. Soon after I was in a foster program, moving around to different families until one wanted to keep me. As young as I was, the sense of not belonging anywhere was instilled in me from the constant changes of “home”. I did not have one, I was the orphan girl. The families I lived with often had their own children, and even they looked at me like I do not belong there. I’ve lived with families that took care of me, gave me food shelter and clothing and also spent some quality time with me when they could, but I also lived with some that neglected me, emotionally, and they didn’t care to get to know me, and I was just temporary to them.
It wasn’t until I was 9 when I got adopted, and when I had heard the news that I was getting adopted it seemed unreal, I had been in foster care for about 5 years than so it was like oh wow this is really happening. The reason why it is important for you to know this is because those experienced during my childhood shaped what I believe is a home. I did not belong to anyone and I moved around quite a bit, but during those moves I met great people that were caring and being around them was the closes feeling to being at home.
I believe that you can live in a huge house with everything you want and more but if your loved ones aren’t around, it doesn’t mean much, it is just a house, not a home. So to answer the question “what makes a house a home?”, at the end of the day, for me any where I live can be a home as long as I have the people that care about me around me.