it feels like home to me

In 50 days everything will change. I've always, always, struggled with things changing but this somehow feels different. I feel like I've taken roots so deep in my current surroundings that when I have to move on I simply won't be able to; the ground will swallow me whole and I won't be able to get out. I've been in places and situations that have felt like a family before, but nowhere that has really felt like home, and everything that come along with 'home'.

Never before in my life have I felt really and truly valued. But I can honestly say that when I'm around these people I feel like I belong and like I am loved. I'm welcomed each and every day with open arms and embraced so tightly that it takes my breath away. If I'm happy, they make me happier, if I'm sad then they cheer me up, and when I was completely broken they were there to listen and help build me back up to become even stronger.

Growing up I never felt popular, I was always the outsider with no confidence and no self-belief. With these people though I feel like I'm their equal, their friend and someone they actually like to be around. I'm not the friend who is only there out of pity like at school, or the girl who never really said anything like in college and university. Today I am the young woman with ambition, dreams, a voice. I'm letting myself be heard, making mistakes and growing from them, loving and being loved back. I am me, and I am proud of everything that I am because of these people. They've helped me grow in confidence and as a person. They are the family that I got to choose.

A family doesn't just have to be the people you are tied to by blood. A family can be anything you want it to be, and anything you let it be. I have found family, comfort and love in the best group of people that I have ever spent time with. I wish it could last a lifetime but, like everything in life, this is only temporary. So whilst my heart really does break with every single day that goes by, it also fills me with so much happiness to know that I will have these memories to look back on, and hopefully these people in my life forever. Things change and people move on, but a family is always a family, no matter how far apart.