"A chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sittin' there
But a chair is not a house and a house is not a home.
A room is a still a room, even when there's nothin' there but gloom
But a room is not a house and a house is not a home."
-A House is Not A Home by Luther Vandross
To make a long and complicated story short, I was forced out of my childhood home when I was nineteen. My family and I had two weeks to pack up eighteen years of memories and clutter into boxes and bags, and find somewhere else to make our shelter for a while. Thankfully a family friend had a trailer for us to live in for as long as we needed to, even though it was far away from our jobs, school, and lives. But it was a stable roof over our heads, four walls, and some heat to keep us warm in the winter, so we tried not to complain.
But it was far from a home. For the long thirteen months that we lived in that trailer, I never once called it home. If I was going back there, I always said “I’m going to the trailer," never “I’m going home." It was not our home, and I was never going to consider it that.
My home was forty five minutes away, in a different town, on the opposite side of the Hudson River, and it wasn’t even mine anymore. The room I once called mine, covered in purple paint with green trim, is now someone else's and covered in a basic shade of beige. The room that was once my playroom is probably now being used as a place to entertain company, and the front hill that we once used to sled down definitely isn’t being covered with kids in the winter anymore.
I know fully well that I was not the definition of homeless. I had a roof over my head that many people who are actually homeless would absolutely kill for, and I should be thankful for that. But I could never get the word “homeless” out of my mind when it came to my situation. I had a house, or a trailer really, but it was not a home. And it never would be.
Because a house, no matter how much people say it is, is not automatically a home. You turn a house into a home; take it’s potential for perfection, fill it to the very top of the roof with love and care, and make it feel like a place you want to be. A roof over someone’s house is now a home, which is why I personally felt as though I was homeless.
Call it dramatic. Call it over-the-top or ridiculous. But that was how I personally felt about my own situation. While other people who may have been in situations similar to mine would not think this way, I know I can’t be the only one. Especially as I did not have a sufficient amount of time to get used to the idea of losing my childhood home, the only home I ever knew. I’m entitled to my feelings and my opinion, especially on a matter so fresh and close to home - or should I say close to house.
