A place I want to be

There is simply too much that I want to say about this photo. My husband and I live for finding small off beat eclectic towns. We visit local coffee shops, we read every thing posted on the community boards, we marvel at color, and people with dreadlocks who wear lots of colors. Truth be told, it is where we feel most alive, most at home. Graffiti about ending war, giant billboards that advertise peace, barefoot kids, all of it energizes something at the core of me. It wasn’t always this way. There was a time I longed for suburbia. I wanted nothing more than to keep up with my suburbia neighbors. I aspired to live in places with large homes, and SUV’s. I wanted the life where socializing happened over expensive meals. I then discovered, all of that simply was not me. My soul is filled with color and vibrancy. It is filled with depth and something more than what I was trying to be – normal. I, am not normal. And I love not being normal. I love that local coffee shops and brightly colored buildings thrill me. I love that I do not truly wish to have a well manicured lawn, or a car that does not rattle, and overheat endlessly in the summer. I want to fit in places that I feel at home, not in which I have to become something I am not. In my life, all to often, I let myself become something I was not – I lost color, I lost vibrancy, I lost my soul. I’m finding it again, finally, in the colorful off beat towns, that I would not have been brave enough to venture in previously, out of fear that they could actually change me…. Little did I know, that my fears were all correct, towns like this did change me.