The Looked Down Upon Town

Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, and every person you meet has a home. To each person their home will be different than yours. For me home is where someplace where I feel warm, safe, and confident to be myself all the time. Not only is home a place where I can be myself, and live carefree, but it happens to also be where my family is, and before this year the only place I have slept. This place is Rockland Massachusetts.

Everyday since I have been out of the hospital, Rockland has been considered my home. For some people, they do not see why I love living in Rockland. To be honest it is not the nicest town, it does not have a good reputation for anything. It is seen to be a poor, rundown, bad town where the academics are seen to be not as good as surrounding towns, and it is the same for athletics. Up to this year, Rockland is all I have ever known, it has been the only place I have ever lived. Since I have been at Hebron, people who have heard of Rockland, and realize I am from there, give me a weird look and one even asked me do you like living in a ghetto. I answer with of I am proud to be from Rockland  and then they ask why, because they have heard the rumors of how bad everything is. I know Rockland is not the ideal place to grow up, we do not have yachts, and can buy anything we want whenever we want, but when people make fun of it I stand up for Rockland. Not because I feel I should, but because I see Rockland as my home, and want to protect it. Just because it is all I have ever known is not the only reason I see it as my home.

Rockland is my home because my family is there. My brother Chris, my mother, and my father all live in Rockland. To me family is pretty much everything. For them I would do anything, to be honest I would take a bullet for them. to my family, my brother, Chris pushed me hard everyday of my life. We had many minor fights, and no matter how mad we were at the time we always made up. My parents, they also pushed me to do my best, but they also molded me into the person I am today. They fed me gave me a roof over my head, helped me with homework, and most importantly believed in me. Somes reaction to this may be weird, but what I am most thankful for, in which my parents chose, is that they chose to raise me in Rockland.

Not only does my family make me feel at home , but so do my friends. Since I was little I have gone to school, grown up and chilled with the same group friends. Even though I left Rockland, and they are still there everytime I go home, it is like I never left, we do the same thing we did before I left, and they also supported me, and my choice to leave Rockland. Up till now I never realized how much my friends and family meant to me. Since I saw them everyday, could talk with them and could physically see them everyday I realized I took that for granted. Last year if you asked me this question I would have given the cliche answer of my house, but now it is something more than that for me, it is my entire town. Rockland is a tight knit community, where everyone knows everyone. It makes me feel at home. No matter what happened if for example in Hockley we won or lost by twenty, the reactions were the same, by my family friends and the rest of the town, they supported us. It goes the same for school, teachers, and other students supported one another, and tried to push everyone to be their best them.

Rockland is where my family is, my friends are, and where I grew up. But that is not why I see it as my home. I see it as my home, because that’s where all my memories are, it is where I can be myself. I got pushed, and supported, helped which led  me to the man I am today. Home is where I can be who I want to be, and the place I was molded into the man I am today, and I will always be thankful and stick up for the “Crappy Town of Rockland Massachusetts”