The End of an "Error", The Start of an "ERA"!

*writer's note: an old blog from a while back, the story remains the same, but the logistics have changed....no more foreign country, just a divorce and a move someplace more peaceful. but the idea remains, so I'm posting it.

When I was a little girl, my momma told me I could become whatever I wanted. One day, she asked me - what do you want to be when you grow up? And I remember looking back at her, with searching eyes, and I said "Momma, I wanna be free."I was born and raised in the south, in a time a place that wasnt meant for me. Even as a child, I knew that I was destined to become something bigger. I was too different to belong inside small town USA, and thus I began searching for my destiny. A destiny that would take me down many different paths, through drowning waters and the suffocation of society. I could never accept the idea of living inside the box. A box, that would try time and again, to force me to conform. My ideas were to big. My thoughts too wide. Over time, I became the person I never envisioned for myself. A wife, a mother, a normalized shell of someone who wasn't supposed to be. I grew complacent, letting my dreams be pushed aside into the shadowed corners of reality. But my inner pull never really left me. A pull to do something bigger, better, wiser. The yearning to embrace my gifts, so that I might finally be free... to be who I was supposed to have become. Childhood dreams are so easily lost. Lost in the flow of ordinary expectations, they become mere memories, faded and dull. We soon forget our "once upon a times", and only to bring them out every now and again. We remove the dust, and polish them like fine silver....remembering them like an old friend, smiling at the fondness of the memories. But then, like that old forgotten friend, we place them gently back only to forget them once more. I've done the same with my own dreams, pushing them to the wayside. Forgetting, neglecting, letting them collect dust. And after all of this time, I have the opportunity to bring my dreams alive. To bring them out once more, arising out of that suffocating dust, and change them from "dream" to reality. I will embrace those dreams that I unintentionally let fall into the depths of the shadows, holding them as I breathe new life into my old friend lost. My dream of seeing the world, and writing of it's wonders, will no longer be just a dream, but my life. And I'm going to take it. I dont know where life is about to take me, what roads I will travel. I will be living in a foreign country, without friends, or my comforts of home. But I will have my life, myself, and that long lost dream of being bigger than this small town.....I'm going to see the world. I am going to be able to live outside the box, outside of the constraints that this place has forced upon me. I will be putting my life, my journey and my words on paper. Maybe one day, as you peruse your local bookstore, there I'll be looking back on you. My words in binding, and my name in print. I'm going to be that person I was born to be, and as you sit with your latte, curled up in a chair, you'll be able to share my journey with me. And although I will miss my friends so badly, I have to take this journey, for my soul. And I will leave, with the powerful knowledge, that never again will have to put my dreams back in that box. No more "forgotten friend" that I allowed to be thrown into the shadows of some sort of yesterday. It may have taken me 36 years, but "Momma, Im gonna be free".