Since I was a little girl, and you, and most occidental or "first world" children had learned that if we want something, we need money to pay for it. As we grow up, we need to study, to get a job, so we can obtain our own money instead of spending parent's. That beautiful dream of emancipacion. The idea of effort on earning the money would give us the idea of the value of what that car we buy has, and we have to use to go back and forth to an alienating job. If we are luckier, we'll move out of the nest. We'll rent or get hooked to a loan for years. We will know how much home costs, every month, every day, but we won't know the real value of it.
Having a home, somewhere to call home, where you feel secure, loved, complete; where you can do and make things without fear, without hiding to the rest of the members who live there too; where you can express your ideas, your dreams, and you are listened, while you deeply listen and support them all. How much could this be valued? Can you put a number, a price, an amount of money for this?
You could say no, because it's the emotional value the most unaccountable of unaccountables in this universe. But I can say yes. There are many people (and I am one of them), who can say, my home costs this much Euros/Dollars. Now you can wonder, how can this be possible?
It's not easy to explain, imagine, for example, a woman who has to leave all behind because of a high risk pregancy, and return to parents home, and to stay there for months, even after birth, because she gets worse (mentally overall). She gets a disability, she discover that all that she wants to do (study, work, care and teach) her beloved toddler has to do it in secret, even showing him the infinite love she has for him, and that even crying is right for a boy, when he is sad or in pain.
Now, you can understand that living in secret is really exhausting. You stop communicating with people, have to wear all the time a mask, and show no emotion at all, and hide all emotions and feelings. It can't last for many time, and it will explode in the worst way. Then, when medication and therapy aren't enough, and it's proven that environment can't be changed, in that moment, you realize that that priceless thing, has a price. When all signals of planning suicide are there, and emergency protocols appear, but just psycological, as social can't be solved, it's like "well, we are taking that date with death and moving some days later".
But this idea appears again, how much is the value of a home, my home? and this question, suddenly, becomes in this other one: is this the price of my freedom? and then you get scared, and wonder if you are really kidnapped or alike. Get a job, get a career, a car, somewhere to live, is that freedom? how much that cost? can I understand the value of having them?
I can tell, exactly, the value of the home I want, and the cost of it. The money it costs would make me free to have a life on my own, with my son, and maybe with his dad (and that's another story to be told other time... about mental disorders and the wonderful people who suffer them). But the value it would have, the change of life, the freedom of a different way of family roles, for a little boy who has a xenophobic, mysoginic, homophobic with no appreciation for any of his interests on music, maths, arts, life and imagination as his masculine influence right now.
Would you thing a single post on steemit could show the world the value of a home? of a life? right now, my heart is in Houston, and Corpus Christi, and in Mexico, where all that Hurricanes and Tropical Storms are making all that floodings and destroying homes and lifes. I pray for them, I have even talked about this to my son, and he's only 3 years and 3/4, in a way he understands. He made me laugh when he asked me: "is Doctor Cooper worried too?" I said, "of course, you know his mom and sister lives in Houston, and sure all friends are making something, but they aren't filming it, as many other volunteers, who are going from all over the world to help, and we are grateful". Also asked me if there would be any change on the space or planets or so, because he relates NASA with Houston, and I said, "no dear, if they can't broadcast from Houston, they'll do from Florida, or from Baikonur, or even from our airport, and remember that these things of planets and space is something bigger and wider than a bunch of scientifist like us, we all are still learning and sure tomorrow they'll make another great discovery, no matter if it's a plant, an animal or a star, and you will discover something new tomorrow too; let's pray for them to recover soon, ok?" And we pray on our style, secretly, as this little chat, and I promise him to show in a map where is Houston, Florida and Baikonur, and again, why there are hurricanes and tropical storms there and not here. He goes to sleep quietly, chatting to himself with his teddy bears, about whatever he has learned that day, weather, history, maths, science, space, astronauts! and I go to bed almost crying, with my dinner of pills, sedated, and hope one day I will have the money for a home, and those secrets would become the best part of the day, and not secret anymore.
So, living without hiding, singing and dancind hawaiian and polinesian music as bad as one really does, or just play and make parties with the classmates of my son, or letting him learn piano, as he wants, and making a solar system, and design a cynetic machine that saves electricity from playing... that's the value of a home for me. And a wall where to place all books, music and movies I have, so my son can have free access to them, apart of the big one he has now!