2025/Jared-

A place I call home is where I really call home is a place where I can really bond with my family and somewhere I can see myself and them grow. I would say I never got a chance to call a place home since I haven’t gotten the chance to live somewhere for more than 4-5 years even though that is a third of my life time. I will say the closest thing to home for me was when I lived in Misawa, Japan. The overall experience I had there was probably the most awakening I've had in life overall. When I mean wakening, I mean maturing and realizing my high school years had just started and I didn't have much time left as a kid. It really took me until the start of my junior year to realize I needed to wake up.

Memories I get to make in an area where I can live for a while is another way of me calling home. Those are ones I don't ever forget, and I get to keep with me until the day I leave the feet of this earth. Being a military child it is hard to call a place home knowing you can’t really say you grew up somewhere. It's like saying you're going to have that one friend for the rest of your life knowing that they come and go. It sucks that you really have that one friend that has been there since day one and you lose them once you or they move, and it just tears you apart. Another place I could call home was when I was stationed in Fort Detrick Maryland. I would like to call this place home because I really spent most of my time growing up there, only because it was a short move from Missouri where I was before, and I was close to my recently passing Grandpa. This topic gets emotional for me, but I would like to bring it up. My grandpa has been there since Day1 for me. I was with him almost every week and we just grew a bond undetachable. He really was one of the main people who showed me hard work and dedication and to what is needed, what is done and what to do right in life. This recent summer we went back to Arkansas to finish building our house and we were able to visit him, as hard as it was to see him in the position where he can barely move. It was also the first time we had lived in Maryland. The day before we were flying out, we all had just woken up and got a call from my aunt saying he wasn’t breathing.

That was probably the hardest day I have ever had to go through not just for me but my dad. Having to see him be that emotional was tough on all of us and the sad part is my brother Jacek doesn’t even know. We finished off our last day there building up the house and securing it and on back to Korea to the Philippines we go. A quote I have gone by since that very day is “Take advantage of the time that people give you without taking advantage of the people giving you time.” To conclude this, a place I call home is where memories that are never forgotten are made.