Home is where the heart is

This is absolutely a place I never thought I would be. Of course I always hoped that I would, I always dreamed it. But I never imagined it could actually happen or that this is how I would get here. I heard the expression home is where the heart is when I was a young child and always loved what I thought it meant. So my whole life I've been "building houses" in my heart. As I child I lived in the immeasurably strong castle that was my parents. It didn't take long though for me to start noticing weak points, holes in the walls. My parents were divorced before I was old enough to remember and I noticed very young they didn't get along. This showed me how the walls crumbled were my mom was nasty towards my dad. The defenses were weakened when I found my dad crying alone in his room. The castle was more fragile than I thought, but that was my house for years. I cherished my castle and boasted it as a magnificent keep. Others tore it down, wall by wall. I lost a wall in 2nd grade when I went to school with shoes that barely covered my feet because we couldn't afford new ones. Part of my roof collapsed when my sister said she hated my dad and wanted to live with my mom. My castle became smaller, but at the center was my dad. He never let it fall. As I grew older and tried gaining friends, my castle evolved into a house of cards. Beautiful and a spectacular. I tested my own self and broke my body trying to impress people. I had plenty of attention when I was stacking the cards. Always doing things to earn a few laughs, but that was where it stopped. I didn't have friends and didn't know how to make them. Never knowing any better I never changed. I continued to build my card house higher and higher. For a while it worked, but there was no true shelter for me. I would fixate on people and try to build for them, to impress them. I had learned tricks on how to "stack the cards." The whole world would disappear outside that one person. I would do everything for them, and every time without fail, they would knock me down. It seemed like some of them would take pleasure in watching my monument to them fall, to seeing me break.I didn't consider though how fragile that was, how it was only for show and could not withstand. In my teens I had my cards knocked down for the last time by the girl I built it for, and there I was again homeless and hurt. Tired of the pain my new house became a bunker. I buried myself deep underground behind thick walls and impenetrable doors. I isolated myself and never truly let anyone in. I spent years alone, underground and sheltering myself from more pain. I thought that this was the pinnacle of how to treat myself. I didn't identify my loneliness, this is how I would survive in a world where houses were torn down by those who could find them. Eventually I grew out of this stage, taking the risk to trust again. I threw myself at the world, immersed myself in too many different worlds of friends and societies and clubs. This was my mansion. It was grandeur and magnificent. Every new person I met was given a room, assimilated into the spectacle. I would open myself up to anyone. It wasn't much different than my house of cards, other than I felt stronger, I was here for the world! I soon learned the problems with this as well. While I had many rooms with many interests and wonders, I could only be on one room at a time. Soon i lost myself, I became whatever room I was in, I became whoever I was with. It started to not have a personality I could call me. Some rooms became lost and I never visited them. Parts of my mansion fell to shambles and I would never recover those parts. Instead I put that, the people they represented, behind me and moved on.if I lost one room, I would build three more. It took losing someone very important to realize the damage I had done to myself. I had to move on. Around this time I had my first girlfriend. We decided to try our hand at living in each other's house, we moved in far to quickly and didn't protect ourselves at all. My house quickly became a place I dreaded to be. I was drug down into darkness and misery, I feared where I was living and didn't know how to escape. As much as I knew it was an awful place for me, I grew to feel like that was what I deserved, how I should be living. This was as much isolation as the bunker, but I didn't feel the safety. I was inhospitable. This was 3 years of my life. Then she left. My house was destroyed, left empty and with damage it would take years to repair, but I could see light coming through the windows. And even though I had ignored many of them and thought I lost them, there were people willing to help me rebuild. This is were I lived for a while longer. Making it my own, small and modest. But something I could call me, and that I could be proud of. Then it happened, I met the woman I would make my wife. I invited her in and my house grew and was beautiful. We left that small place behind and started to build our own. And this is where I am now. With my wife and beautiful baby son to have a home. It's small still but growing. The walls are sturdy and safe, it is glorious and beautiful. I have places to escape and recover when I need. This home has the best parts of Evey house I've ever built. And more than anything it feels like the first true home I have ever built. With my family and friends traveling by my side I am at a place I never thought I would see, but have always longed for. I am home.