A House Without a Home

House (noun): a building for human habitation, especially one that is lived in by a family or small group of people.

Home (noun): the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.

I’ve been a long time believer that a home doesn’t have to be a physical place. In a fit of teenage angst, I firmly believed that I did not have a home. I would fight with my mom until we were both at a wit’s end. Depression caused me to mess up my childhood room until the floor was nearly impossible to tread in and I moved between vacated rooms around the house, eventually settling on the orange couch in the living room.

For the longest time, the student center, dubbed ‘Wagon Wheel’ for the single wagon wheel hanging from the wall became my home. After school, I would hole up in the Wagon Wheel, working on student council projects. After finishing for the day, I would work on my school work in the corner and return home at 10 or 11 PM. I found solace in sitting at club meetings or friend’s houses, finding comfort in their words and accepting environment.

I never ran away for more than a night, before my mom tracked me down and dragged me back to the house. But the sad reality is that there are many are not fortunate to have someone fight for them. Between 1 to 1.7 million children are runaway or homeless over the course of a year. 61.8% of those are estimated to have depression.

This is just a small portion of all homeless individuals in the states. Millions of individuals find themselves without a house, and then find themselves without a home after losing their support systems. Miracle Messages is an organization based in San Francisco that aims to reconnect the adult homeless population with their loved ones, in hopes of rebuilding the support systems that make a home and home. Hundreds of clients on Miracle Messages are hopeful to be reunited with a family member, and thousands of volunteers work through social media connections to try to find and reconnect them. Successful Miracle Messages reconnections are usually positive interactions between both the homeless and their loved ones. In my short time working with Miracle Messages, I wasn’t able to successfully reunite anyone, but watching the videos that were made by people who have lost their homes one way or another reaching out to their support systems has been humbling. Over the years, I have since returned to my childhood room, where my Hello Kitty wall decals remain plastered on the wall. And recently, for the first time, I enjoyed being home.

Without the support beams holding up the walls, ceiling, doors, the home would crumble into nothing. A home without support is just a pile of dirt.