text: Family. It wasn't a choice we had, but a gift. A place we call home. To some of us, it is what we live for, and to others, what we escape for. When we went face to face with all our fears and learned our lessons through the tears, it was the same people who we tried to run away from because they didn't understand us, or we felt like an outcast who stood by us and became the ladder we needed to climb our way up to find the light again. When we fell into the most bottomless pits of misery, heart wrecks, sadness, depression, and felt the utmost of betrayal from the dark world we thought we knew better, who did we choose to run back to? Good memories keep one warm in the storms of living; they are the moment's real flashes of dreams made it into the real world, and so even though we often need to process or ignore the bad memories that they are intermingled with, they are worth keeping safe in your heart. For these are the moments we humans won some joy, despite the struggle, we smiled and laughed anyway. The happy times happened. They were real. We pack our mental suitcases with only the best of memories so we can fly anyplace we want. Did you ever wonder if our "good" choices are our "god" choices? That they are the ones, we do from a sense of love and duty for others and the self? My father always told me, I'll always guide you home no matter where you are, and think of me if ever you're afraid. Because one day you're going to leave this world, so make every second of it worth it, live a life you're going to remember and be proud of. I used to think, what is he on about every single day? He probably took off the words from another random motivational speech he was listening to; he doesn't get me. He never will. Good choices are made not on the journey, but in a moment, at a fork in the road. This is how the brain is; it is how we are. The forward motion comes best when the primitive drive and the higher social brain agree on a path. I just wanted acceptance from the outside world. I craved that temporary love, those like a face that wasn't even originally mine but covered with delusionary beauty standards, to fit in a crowd, forcing me to paint over the real me, be more them and less me. I had to be a certain way, act a certain way, and feel a sure way to earn the kind of love that wasn't promised for tomorrow. A love that changed who I was, the me in my own body felt distant. I behaved the opposite of what was going on in my mind when deep down, I knew this felt wrong, but I wasn't ready to let go because I knew the world wouldn't be in my grasp anymore. I would be lonely and become a refugee, desperate to escape the war inside my head to fit in. I just wanted a home. I didn't even need plastic surgery to change myself; all I had to do was feed myself negativity, hatred, and envy of myself that I am not beautiful in my skin. I had to become one of them to feel special. And that was the start of a damaged, emotionally unstable, empty me that I regret to this very day. If only I knew the consequences then, I would have never fallen into that trap of fake love and alluring lies. Yet my family never left my side. Their love was real, the genuine kind that stuck around when everyone turned their back against me as I drowned in my despair. Their love never faded nor lessened; even when I tested every inch of their willpower to raise me into the person they wanted to see aspire into a powerful individual, they still believed in me. They never gave up on me or chose to let me go. But the world did. I was the show's puppet and once got played with, used for satisfactory personal benefits, got thrown away like I meant nothing to them. They shut me off when I tried to run back to them. They never loved me; they just loved what I offered on the table for them. They loved watching me ache in desperation and sat back and relished what they gained from what I was losing. I had nothing left. It was all snatched away. I had nowhere to go except back to the place I hesitated to call home. And when I did, it was like I never left. Nothing changed. The questionable love I put a label on my parents, concluding they don't get me, finally unravelled. No one understood me like them. No one cares for me like them. I sought love to feel appreciated by others and came back home to the love that never died in the first place. Love is a quiet emotion that, in time, becomes part of the oxygen you need to breathe, and so though you may feel not sure that it's there, any form of removal and the emotions begin to choke. I never correctly understood that the love of my parents is eternal. They are the only ones who accept us for who we are. And when I was lost, it was their light who guided me to who I am today. If you argue with your parents or haven't called them in a while, make sure you do. You never know when it can be your last. No one knows you better than them. You can go searching anywhere and will still come back to the place you hesitated to home. It lives with me till this very day. I can't imagine a world without my family.