Is it normal: to move into a care home & find you like it??

I’m a young woman – nearly 30 – who happens to be wheelchair-bound. My parents cared for me until they were getting so they couldn't. The social worker basically pushed independent living on me, which means somebody coming in 3x daily to help me. I need more help than that, although I don't look, act or sound as if I do.

My parents would need breaks so I stayed in various places that had no idea how to look after me & didn't really want to. I told my friend, who lived in one I was staying in, that I was looking round a specific one. I can't give its name. She looked frightened & said she didn't like it, without saying why. According to disabled people I chatted to online, care homes were the worst option ever & if you move in one you might as well be dead. As the weeks turned into months & the months turned into years I cried myself to sleep about my future. I was terrified.

I moved into a smaller care home 6mo ago – the one I was telling said friend about. My intermittent depression has gone, I feel much safer, I've lost a ton of weight without trying, have found stuff out about myself I always suspected but never knew, & get on better with my parents than I ever did. I've always lived a slower pace of life than most people my age anyway, & I’ve always got on better with older people due to our shared music tastes.

The staff are brilliant & I see them as friends/adoptive family. When I had what I prefer to call a “problem” I was frightened to death of their reaction but they got to me almost straight away, telling me it wasn't the end of the world & chatting about other stuff.

In all the other places I was given dirty looks & told to stop ringing the ******* bell or they'd take it out of the wall, & my breathing machine I used at night coming off wasn't important, while my friend was in tears, dripping.

In this one, none of this has +happened, & to be honest I would miss it if I/it wasn't there.

Is this normal or am I losing my marbles ?? Obviously I would rather not have been disabled, but someone up there didn't like me very much!