My favorite color is blue. Not just any blue, but dark blue in particular. I was quite the adventurous tomboy when I was little, so it didn’t seem so odd then to favor what our society deems a “masculine” color, especially at an age where one’s favorite color changes on a daily basis. In elementary classrooms, where most things are brightly colored, dark blue seemed like a rarity. Which was why I liked it. It was the color of the sky when I stayed up too late reading, going on adventures I never could in real life. It was the star-spangled color that taught us unity so we would never feel as alone. I was the only one who liked it, and that made me feel special. Everyone else had their purples and pinks, and I had dark blue. In an age of crayon communism, it was nice to have something that was your own.

Yet the search for identity and individuality became a lot more complicated than crayon preference. It takes a certain amount of bravery to be yourself and do things your own way. I’ve always admired the people who had this sort of bravery, and strived to have it myself. Yet this can be excessively strenuous at times, and some days I didn’t feel brave at all. After I moved, I could no longer escape to the tops of trees; soon the insides of books slowly became words on pages. With my sense of adventure depleting, I felt trapped.

That was when I found my way out. Our new house had a second level with a window that overlooked my rooftop. It took me months of mustering up the bravery I had always cherished so much to remove the safety screen and step outside. As I overlooked the edge of town, and stood at twice the height of any tree I’ve climbed, I felt my sense of adventure coursing back. It’s quiet up there, not too bad of a place to sit and read a book. At night sometimes, when the tiles are no longer hot, you can climb to the top and see that same dark blue. Several years later, and while that star-spangled color doesn’t seem to have changed, the stars, however, look a little different now.