I’ve never been good at figuring out what “love” is. It’s treated like it’s the single most complicated word to explain and it’s even more difficult to say, but when it comes to my family it’s as if I can’t say it enough. Although I know that the word love will never be able to truly describe how I feel towards them and I’ll never be able to offer them the amount of thanks they deserve for everything they’ve done for me.

They watched me grow up and they’ve been there for me for every bad moment and for every good moment. My family is more than a bloodline, they’re more than an anchor, and they’re a huge part of my life. They’ve given me opportunities that I would never have been able to get without their help. They raised me in an absolutely wonderful place and I couldn’t be happier with who I became thanks to them.

It must’ve been difficult, though. Thinking about it I was probably a huge handful. I was incredibly moody and there were an uncountable number of times where they couldn’t understand what I needed, but that wasn’t their fault because honestly, I didn’t know what I needed either. However, they always did everything they possibly could in order to help me and give me the love they felt I deserve.

I’m told often that I’m a lovely human being and I’m polite and punctual and there are so many good qualities that I’m told I possess, and those are the qualities I learned from my family. They taught me how to be a person. They taught me how to treat other people and they taught me to be as respectful as possible to everyone I encounter. They taught me how to show unconditional love because they never stopped loving me no matter how difficult and complicated life seemed to get.

So when I say that I love my family, I don’t do it out of a force of habit, I do it because I need them to know that they are the greatest people that have ever happened to me. They brought me up and held me up higher when I faced something I never thought I’d be able to handle even in a million years. I tell them I love them because they are truly everything to me.

I may not know what love is 100 percent but I know that I see it every single day. I see it in the way my mother looks at me. I hear it in the way my father speaks to me. And I feel it in the way that they show it to me. The amount of love they show me is so much more than I could even ask for. It’s infinite and strong and it gives me so much happiness.

Having my family has taught me that even having just a little bit of love goes a long way, but they’ve given me so much love that I can make it all the way to the end of wherever I end up. I’ll always hold them in my heart, I will always keep them in mind when making life changing decisions, and I will always have an enormous amount of love for them.