The Momentous Meaning of Home

Home is not just a place you live in. It's not something you build within a year or so. The home I'm thinking of does not need walls, windows or even wood to build. This home needs a family. This is something that takes time to build up. Home isn't something you can just move out of. It's something that sticks with you forever no matter where you go or what you do. Home is family, home is love and comfort in times of need. When I was around seven years old, I faced the biggest hardship I've faced yet. I moved. I moved from a loving town of adoration, that was close to my friends and family, to an anonymous place, close to a foreign town, and unknown people. This changed my life. Not only because I moved into a different house, but because I thought that since I had moved out all of my memories stayed there with it. Soon after I moved I lost my dog, and then my car. It seemed like ever since I moved all of my elatedness, and memories were slowly going away with everything I lost. I then had a realization: that house didn’t hold the memories, it was the family that made them. “Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.” - N.K. Jemisin. I'm still afraid to call this new pile of wood my home, my family, now that's another story. This essay means the world to me, because I know what it's like to lose a home that means so much to you. I want everyone to feel the loving, comfort of a home, and family. The meaning of home can not be fit into just 300 words, it's simply not enough. Not even close.