"The Home I Contemplate"

A home.

My home.

It's a lovely house, not just any house. It's the kind of place you see in movies, where every creaking floorboard has a backstory and the walls seem to hug you.

Sketches in school notebooks were the beginning. I sketched staircases that spiraled like seashells and windows with flower boxes, while others drew superheroes or scrawled mathematical formulas. I pictured a small reading nook with the perfect amount of afternoon light and a fireplace that crackled in the winter. Quiet charm, soft corners, and laughter resonating in the hallways were all features of my ideal home.

Life happened, as it always does, as I grew older. While you manage reality—jobs, rent, bills, and broken light bulbs—dreams tend to wait patiently. However, the house continued to grow in my mind. It changed styles, sometimes modern, sometimes rustic, and sometimes a strange combination of the two, but it was always cozy and always mine.

I began gathering items long before I had a place to store them. An antique doorknob from a secondhand store. A charming lamp that was chipped and brought back memories of my grandmother's home. Paint swatches in soft creams and soothing blues. Before I even had the foundation, I was constructing the house's soul.

Then came the building itself.

The attempt, that is.

I recall having no experience, a hopeful smile, and a folder of floor plans in my hand as I stood on the vacant piece of land. How hard can it be, I wondered? Hehe. Funny.

I discovered things in a matter of weeks that I had never inquired about. Concrete doesn't pour itself, for example. Or the fact that permits need more paperwork than a global spy operation. There were budget issues, delays, contractors who vanished for no apparent reason, and a very irate raccoon who claimed the property before me.

But through the chaos, the dream kept pulling me forward.

But the dream continued to drag me ahead despite the confusion.

I began to see it, beam by beam, brick by brick. The house wasn't flawless by any means. The roof leaked that one time when it rained sideways, and the floors squeaked in all the wrong places. However, I thought it was lovely.

There’s a crooked light fixture in the hallway that I could never quite fix. A scratch on the living room floor from when I moved the sofa alone (bad idea). And the front door, for reasons unknown to science, always sticks in the summer. But every imperfection is a chapter in my story.

I've never been able to straighten the hallway's crooked light fixture. I moved the sofa by myself, which was a bad idea, and left a scratch on the living room floor. Additionally, the front door always stays in the summer for reasons that science cannot explain. However, each flaw is a new chapter in my life.

It wasn't a glamorous trip. It was noisy, messy, costly, and sometimes very sad. It was mine, though.

Perhaps that is the true dream, I think as I sit in my slightly skewed chair in my slightly flawed house. Not flawless. Not pictures for Pinterest. Simply a space for your soul to expand and breathe.

A lovely home that was constructed with a lot of love, patience, and perseverance in addition to wood and stone.

And I might construct another one day. But this one is home for the time being.

For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of bricks, beams, and a sunny porch where I could sip my morning tea—not of celebrity, wealth, or fast cars.