South Beach

South beach was home to me for about 3 years. It is where I began my journey away from home. I was 18 when I first called South Beach home. It was a lot different then. Its commercialization was not so intense there were still many more families and life wasn’t always as fast as it now is. South Beach’s Art Deco buildings, pastels, stucco walls, tropical gardens, and hidden courtyards are called home by many communities of diverse cultural and sexual identities. Back then, everyone came here escape, to get away from it all. It’s small enough that it’s easy to recognize faces when you live here but I saw no old familiar faces, only new ones. I was happy to walk down Lincoln Road and look at its many store fronts and silently relive old memories. It was my last day in Miami and I wanted to absorb most of what I use to call home before heading to New York. It felt good to walk down its’ street but I realized that I walked with the glee of a spectator not the calm of an insider. I was not home anymore this was just a place I would always visit and nothing more. Home was calling. I felt the cabin fever and the desperation of feeling out of place. Walking back to the car I remembered that younger version of myself, lost, inexperienced, lonely, and unaware of whom I was, finding and reinventing myself through experience on these very streets. The freedom of that journey unhindered by my care of judgment and guided by a spirit, long caged by worldly rules and outside forces, allowed me a lifelong confidence in myself. I am the man I am today because my path once brought me here.