The Thing With Fangs

Home.

Ramble #3

No one knows what it's like to lose a world until you're forced to leave the first home you've ever truly had. I'm one of those people who's never been able to recite an address when asked about home, who has never had a hometown whose cluttered shops and sparsed neigborhoods are as familiar as the lines on their palm.

My home has basically been wherever we unpacked the big cardboard boxes. And honestly, it's not so terrible.

The only time I've ever felt the real pain of having to sever ties and fly off was leaving a city in a foreign country no less. I had loved the school there, had had the best teachers anyone could ask for, had the two best and silliest friends I've ever had the privilege to meet, and had loved my first boyfriend. I lived in a big, ancient house with painted windows and creaky wooden boards with a pitiful three-foot back patio that overlooked a brick wall lined with vines. It was my home. 

The year after I left was pure hell. My insomnia kicked in with a vengeance, and I suffered from depression that just blanketed me in this hazy gray cloud. Most of it is actually a blur. That same year, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. They performed the mastectomy, but the doctors did not catch it in time. It metasticized to her bones. This was devastating for my family; we were watching someone we loved fading fast.

I had no one to talk to. The people I met in that town didn't want to hear sad stories or deal with a lonely new girl who was moody and always falling apart. I didn't blame them for that, I couldn't. No one wants to deal with that. People look for those who will help lighten the burden of living, not shove their problems down their throats.

My mother is like the sun in our solar system, and without her I can honestly say we would probably fall apart. This was a terrible thing that hit us, and personally, hit hard. To get better care for her, within eight months we were up and gone once again. 

My mother has never been one to complain. Someone even told her, back after one of her surgeries, that she should prbably go see a therapist--because she was acting too cheerful. It's so easy to look at her and forget that she's ill. She is a survivor, and she'll always fight. 

Her illness, that awful year, at the time I thought it was all for nothing. I thought it was just piling misery and that we'd been cursed. But I came to realize something, something I think I might have lost sight of back in my old home city--that my real, true home is, has always been, the people I love the most. The only constants in my life.

Isn't that something we hear everyday? I don't know, but I feel like people get too attached to material things (I certainly do) and we have this way of pushing away the human aspects, the realization that the flesh-and-blood people around us are us, people with thoughts and feelings just as real as ours. And we have this way of taking advantage of the love given to us. I looked back on the years I spent in that foreign city and I came to see that, time and time again, I blew off the people I knew in my heart of hearts would be there for me no matter what I did. I rarely spent time with my family, truly spent time with them. Those awful few years after our move, I grew more closer to them than I had ever been before.

My sister and my mom are now my best friends. Before, I couldn't stand being around them. It sounds terrible, I know, but hey, what can I say? Family drives people crazy. My brother and I had lost touch, and now we're close. And I am so, so thankful.

I guess there are always reasons for things that happen. You just have to look. And I know now that the four people who have always been around, whether it was throwing off my covers and yelling at me to get up or cracking stupid jokes to make me laugh, are and always will be the pieces of my home. 

'Home is where the heart is' will forever be a saying of truth. Never take advantage of the love given to you, and never waste a moment with the people you love, whether it's a family member, a best friend, a boyfriend or girlfriend. Don't spend your days wallowing in sadness. You never know what could happen tomorrow.