Before the age of twelve I always asked myself “where is Home”?
My environment was constantly changing growing up. Often times my days would start at a different home then they would end. Different faces and rules. I learned to assimilate fast. I learned to read faces and body language to survive. After a while I saw patterns within everything. It was within this dynamic of surviving that I found a “home”.
Home became a physical place at the age of twelve. I had my own bedroom with a dresser to put my clothes. I had my own closet to hang my dresses and sweaters. It was intense to be asked what kind of decorations I wanted for “my” room.
When I was 19, my adoptive father took a job that would take us from St. Anne Illinois, population of 1200 people to Indianapolis, indiana. I remember cleaning and packing my room and I found an old plastic bag I had brought when I first moved into my room. That was how I moved from foster home to foster home before moving into my first real home. In black garbage bags.
It wasn’t even two years after we moved to Indianapolis that I got married and had to put together a Home of my own. The concept was hard to understand. Monthly rental payments, utility bills and assimilating to the Army culture was really intense. I battled depression and then I got pregnant. It was tough trying to maintain a Home for my small family.
My marriage was abusive and the idea of Home was again just in my head at that point. Took me almost 10 years to leave him. It wasn’t untill age 30 that I realized how much having a Home meant to me. The stability of being able to provide for my family. At 36 I realize that Home is a fine balance between the inner world and the outer world. I find it is hard function without some sort of physical manifestation of stability that I create.
So create. Get out of your head.
I tell myself this daily.
❤Jemma