To me, my room is a sanctuary, the safest and most comfortable place. When looking around my bedroom many things can be seen, my bookshelves, my posters, my endless collection of stuffed animals, but also my closet doors which my bed is pointing towards. The two wooden doors are 8 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and the doors close together in the middle. These two doors are a light brown color, but you can’t really tell because, on those doors, I have pictures of all my friends. I’ve had pictures on them since 6th grade, constantly adding new ones and removing the old ones to keep the doors as up-to-date as possible. I have over 50 different pictures hanging on my doors. Some of these pictures like the one of my best friend and I hugging in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World, two of my swim team friends squishing me into a hug at my last ever swim banquet, another with a different friend and I laying on her bed our heads hanging towards the floor laughing at a joke only the two of us would find funny. I love those photos, and they are some of my favorites, but even they can't compare to one picture on those doors. One I refuse to change or move until the day I change homes myself. It’s a picture of my family.

It is the single most important picture on those doors. Yes, it is quite old, after all, we did take it for my little brother's first Easter. My brother was not even a year old yet, my sister was just six, I was only nine, and my parents were both turning 30 later that year. And yet, out of every picture on my doors, seven years later, it's still my favorite one. No picture from the past, and I doubt in the future, can compare to that one. We’re all dressed up in our best Easter outfits, my sister, and I wearing beautiful dresses, mine blue and hers green, with our hair done up in pigtails and ponytails, my father and brother wearing blue dress shirts and khaki pants with large grins on their faces, my mom in a cyan floral shirt with her black and white glasses. In the background, you can see the brown bark of the tall trees and some of their green leaves, with our clothes contrasting being an arrangement of vibrant colors. Looking at all these tiny details never ceases to lift my mood.

My family is the most important thing in my life; they have always been my top priority. This picture shows my whole family back when it was still new. This one photograph holds memories that weren’t even created at the time it was taken but also one from many years prior. From the day my sister was born, when we bought our first real house, us moving into the house we live in now, the day we adopted our dog, the day my brother was born, all the way up to us cracking jokes on the couch while watching a movie together just the other night. This picture is small, it’s outdated, and looks old with the corners starting to curl. To most, it appears like nothing more than just a picture, but to me, it is everything and more. Examining this picture brings a flood of emotions and memories no other image can bring me. 

I never know what I’ll feel when I look up from my bed, seeing that picture in the morning, before bed, or even while I do my homework in my room. I feel joy, remembering how much I am loved, protected, and that I always have people to rely on, but I also feel a wave of sadness. It reminds me of what I will have to depart from for a while after I go off to college. This idea that I might go months without playing games with my little brother, watching music videos with my little sister, having late-night talks with my mom on her bed, or tasting my dad’s wonderful cooking. The idea is that I’ll go months without embracing my family. That I’m taking something I do just about every day as routine and making it an occasion. The idea petrifies me more as it inches closer to being here. 

It is so unbelievably strange that this photo can make me feel all these emotions, that I never know what to expect when looking at it. The picture’s meaning isn’t always the same, forever changing like the life around it. But, even with all of this change, the routine being torn apart, the familiarity leaving, one thing is a constant. The one thing that will always remain the same is how much it means to me, the people it represents, and how much I love and always will love them. There is not a thing in the world that could change that.