Essay about Personal Journal: On Moving and Memories of a Home

My sisters and I all squished together on the small couch. So finally after what felt like twenty years, mom and dad said “We’re moving”. My stomach dropped. I loved this house, it was the only house I could remember living in, it was home. ”Where are we moving to?” I managed to say, hoping it would be across the street or something close. “Georgia!” she said with a soothing smile and hope and excitement in her eyes. Of course I didn’t want to move, especially out of state, my nine year old self was devastated, and before I knew it boxes were

Family is defined differently for everyone. Family members can live down the street or in another country. Some people have close knit families while others do not. Similarly, home is also defined differently for everyone. Some people might believe that home is just the house they live in, and with each move comes a new home. Others, however, believe that home is where their family is. People use family as a way to define home in slightly different ways. For example, in her essay “On Going Home,” Joan Didion writes about wanting to give her daughter “home” for her birthday. Didion describes her home as being where her family is. In his essay, “Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee uses his mother as a way of defining his home. In the third

Moving away from the place that one calls home is a hard situation, especially for a child at a young age. I lived in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and I was in the eighth grade. I had been in Brookhaven School District majority of my childhood. I had plenty of friends, and I was involved in school clubs. It was two weeks before the beginning of my freshman year when I got the news. My mom called me in her room and explained why I had to transfer schools. My sister has Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, and she felt that it was best that we try a smaller school. I called up my friends to tell them the news, and we decided that these last few nights were going to be the best. We went out to bowl, had sleep overs, and had a special trip to the waterpark. I felt so happy to get that time with them, but moving day came and ruined all of the fun. That morning we packed up the house, said our goodbyes to our neighbors, and drove away. Though as I rode in the car towards a new beginning, I felt like I left behind the whole world behind me.

As I went downstairs the tone of the room felt hot, humid, and empty. Hot, because of the burning Atlanta temperatures of ninety-eight degrees or higher. Humid, caused by the broken air conditioning and affecting the density of the atmosphere. Finally empty. The furniture was missing and minimal sounds can bounce off to make echoes. I was departing from a place that I called home. I lived at the address 353 Leisure Court for almost a year; the identity of the street brings back smiles to my face because of its pleasantry. Living here has made me feel secure like a dog to his owner. Moving away from this security brought feelings of uncertainty. My lack of confidence was about the new beginnings my family would experience after the move. But

The living room was colored a cinnamon Pop-Tart brown, the kitchen was painted bright red, was as small as a closet, and all throughout was old navy-blue carpeting. These are clashing colors I would come to ignore over the years. At first everything was okay, me and my younger sibling adjusted well enough. Our dad decided that seeing us wasn’t as important as other things in his life, so we attached ourselves to our mom. No matter what, her dark brown curly hair and perfume would always comfort us when we needed it, which turned out to be a lot more than we thought. After some time, packs of canned beer would find their way into the fridge every weekend. These were Tim’s, and they meant more to him with each passing year. Throughout the years we came to discover just how evil alcoholism is. Screaming, hatred, foul language and the smell of barley would fill the house almost every

We were walking for a few hours. My feet throbbed and my ears were ringing from Taylor’s whining. Finally I could see it, the old abandoned house I discovered one day while riding my bike. The door was barely hanging onto its hinges, and there were several windows missing or broken. I pried open the splintering oak door. In the house there was two rooms. One, the one you first enter, was most likely a kitchen and living room. There was a sofa with faded fabric and springs popping out everywhere. An old furnace sat in the corner with rotting charcoal inside. The door of the furnace was missing rendering the whole thing useless. The other room was much smaller. It was a bedroom. There was a twin sized bed. The frame was rusty and missing a leg. I pulled the mattress off of it, so we could sleep on it. There were springs and stuffing sticking out of the mattress. It wasn’t too dirty to sleep on because I pulled off the moldy sheets. We laid down on the mattress. Taylor started snoring within minutes. I was worried about Mom. She had had a seizure before. It was because of her failing liver. Last time, social services took me and my sisters to a girl’s home. They served cooked vegetables that smelled like rotten seafood and chicken noodle soup with frozen chicken. After Mom got out of the hospital she got custody of us, but the judge told her if it happened again she wouldn’t get us back. My older sister, Becca, was eighteen so she didn’t have to

When my dad and stepmom began talking about moving, I didn’t think much of it. They had moved a lot, so I admit I wasn’t really worried about it. Where they were living then, was my favorite out of all the places they had lived because it was right down the road from my mom’s house. It was easy for my sister, Kelcey, and I to go visit our dad, stepmom, and little sister, Kyra. We could literally just walk, before I had a car, over there almost whenever we wanted. But, that changed when they started talking about moving again.

All of my memories are built around a house with yellow shutters and a red rooftop, colors I always begged dad to change. Although all of the houses around me are the same uniform type, black roofed and black shuttered, I look at my house and I cannot help but sigh in relief and think “This is home,” the place where I took my first steps only to fall right after, the place where my mom constantly cooked kimchi-jigae, and the place where I first had my heartbreak - not by a boy, but by my first C on a test.

On June 2nd 2017 I left for my new home, 5940 Golden Drive Chicago. That day I jumped in my parents car with my two siblings and he headed to our soon to be home for a long 5 hour drive. On our way we took many stops and many naps however once my family and I reached our destination I was in awe. I could not believe my eyes, our new house was so cute! It was white with a wrap around porch! When I walked in I already felt at home, it was decorated for fall with warm tones and smelt like pumpkin pie was just made. I immediately went upstairs looking for my bedroom, I just couldn't help myself. As soon as I found my room, many ideas for decorating came running through my head. I was so excited to move all of my furniture into my room making this

Jessica just moved out of her hometown to move to Florida. Her mother enrolled her to a local High School from where she lives. She was very excited to go because she wanted to make new friends and have a fresh start. She is very pretty and outgoing so she instantly made friends and had got the attention of almost all the football team. Katie the caption of the cheerleader did not like her because she thought Jessica was going to take her boyfriend. She told her friends to tweet about Jessica and say mean stuff about her so Jessica can move back. Her friends listen and told other people to say bad things about Jessica. People soon stopped hanging out with her and she was devastated. Everyday their will be people commenting and saying hurtful

Rain drummed incessently on the roof, as I stared glumly out the window into the wet, dreary, gloomy, world. Nothing compares to being stuck inside your grama's musty, antique house on a rainy day. Where the only things to read are outdated newspapers and old fashioned books. If you listen hard enough you can detect the water flowing through her ancient pipes and can hear the creak of the floorboards. Gramma tells me to man up and figure out something to do, but both of my little siblings are napping, so even the slightly less boring distasteful possibility of playing a game with them is out of the question. I tap my fingers mindlessly on the window sill desperately searching my

In a matter of fact, home is a noun that is defined in the -Collins

The fleeting changes that often accompany seasonal transition are especially exasperated in a child’s mind, most notably when the cool crisp winds of fall signal the summer’s end approaching. The lazy routine I had adopted over several months spent frolicking in the cool blue chlorine soaked waters of my family’s bungalow colony pool gave way to changes far beyond the weather and textbooks. As the surrounding foliage changed in anticipation of colder months, so did my family. My mother’s stomach grew larger as she approached the final days of her pregnancy and in the closing hours of my eight’ summer my mother gently awoke me from the uncomfortable sleep of a long car ride to inform of a wonderful surprise. No longer would we be returning

“The House I Live In,” a movie that explains the war on drugs from multiple perspectives from addict to enforcement and lawmaker between.

Home is the place one spends more time in their life and share special moments with family. Where one expects to live permanently carefree and feel protected under the roof of their house. One day I want to have a home that makes me feel well and where I can be safe and happy. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the decisions I made about designing my future dream house.