Home.  That has been a complex for me, home. The saying goes, home is where the heart is, but i never understood this as a child.  In fact, it spread through my body at rapid speeds, feeling like a fire that burned my throat when I would use my harsh words to object.  That has been a complex for me, home, but I remember when it was different.  

When I was ten, I was informed that my mother was sick.  Not sick with a cough, no. Sick in her head. My mother was trapped, bound by her own mind and couldn't escape.  This “sickness”, caused her to go against her morals and hurt the people she cared for. My mother was an addict, but she was my mother.  My mother, with a face of stone and voice sharp as a knife, but my mother, nonetheless. I remember when she was “normal”. When people did not stare at me when my mother and I were in public together.  They made me feel like I was the crazy one, maybe i was. I remember when she would read me stories and her voice was soft when her eyes were warm and inviting. Growing up without a mother was hard. The nights my mother's alcohol-fueled rage made her spit venom and blindly hit me, I felt like she didn't love me anymore, so I learned to live without a mother.  I learned that you can find the love of a mother elsewhere. In a teacher, the local librarian, or even the elderly woman that smiles at you on your trek to school. Wherever you find it, you have the love of a mother without your mom.

When I was fourteen, my mother disappeared into thin air.  Vanished. Gone. I was having a picnic with my little sisters that I learned to care for.  They picked flowers for my mother on the way home, hoping it would cheer her up. However, when we arrived to my beat-up house in the middle of the city, something felt off.  The girls ran past me through the door, the fragrance of cut grass and daisies tickling my nose. She left us. Running through a vacant building that once almost felt like home, she was no one to be found. “But it was getting better kiki” my older sister whispered to me.  “Was it?” a chorus of “where are you mommy” from my younger sisters rang through the house, punching an even deeper hole in my chest. She left us. “I never got to say goodbye”. I waited for my mother to pop out and we would laugh like we used to, but this was real life, and she wasn't coming back.  

When I was fifteen,  I was ripped out of my slumber by my father pounding at my door.  I rolled over in my bed, room illuminated by the moon shining in through the window.  The clock read four in the morning. When I opened the door to reveal my father ́s trembling figure I knew the news was bad, but nothing had prepared me for what he told me next.  “Your mother is dead” I don't know what was worse. The fact that my mother was gone for good, or that she was never there, to begin with.  

I am now seventeen.  It has been a little over a year since my mother ́s death.  This experience has caused me to miss out on a lot. I spent a long time dwelling on the past and seeing it in everyone.  When sadness is all you ́re surrounded by, it is the only thing you seem to notice, causing the world to seem bland and unsatisfying.  I became terrified of people and i thought i didn't need friends, but boy did I want them. As a result, I am self-sufficient and I don't rely on anyone, but that doesn't mean I don't want to.  As of today, I have two best friends that I care for, even if I have a little trouble showing it. Home. That has always been a complex for me, home. There is a saying that goes, home is where the heart is, and I think I finally understand.  In my friends, I have found a home. It's a little broken, for they are wounded too, but in each other, we ́ve found resilience, home.