Graffiti.

The Atlanta graffiti is some kind of gorgeous. As a child, I guess you're taught to see graffiti as a bad thing. Derelict. Run down. Crime. Disrespectful.

But in Atlanta, it's treated as anything but. Hell, the artists advertise underneath their graffiti - websites of artwork, photos of their graffiti all over the city, for the world to see. It's something to be proud of, and if I had that much talent with a spray can, I sure would be, too. Advertisements for events are given in places such as the Krog Street bridge. The way that Atlanta treats graffiti is some kind of wonderful, and different than anywhere else I've ever lived, and I'm right on board with it. 

Day by day driving through the city, I am stunned by gorgeous designs - cloud breathing dragons, foxes flying on the wind... even an entire rainbow tunnel that is one of the most lovely things I've yet seen. All graffiti.

Bad?

Sometimes, it just takes a little perspective to turn things around.

As I drove down Edgewood downtown last night, I stared at the graffiti and thought,

people are kind of like that.

Graffiti colours our lives. Our experiences, our heartbreak, our joy, our memories, our flashes of experience and hot and cold and beautiful sad lovely and wonderful things in between - are like splashes of graffiti, covering up the blank grey walls that life surrounds us in. 

People tell you to cover up graffiti, paint over it, but what if you did just the opposite? What if you embraced it?

You'd see a world that is beautiful from a whole new perspective, perhaps.

Unlike anything you'd ever seen, and not in a bad way.

My whole life is made up of those splashes of colour. My vibrant mistakes, my emotions, run ragged through life and love, loss and gain - my Diabetes, the pinpricks and bruises that cover this physical and finite body of mine. You think people judge you for your graffiti, but maybe actually, they can see just how beautiful it is, too. 

Because it is. Together, it makes art. Together, it is a beautiful display of colour, originality to the eyes. Something different than the ordinary, something special. It makes you like nothing else on Earth. We spend too much time trying to cover up our mistakes with regret and remorse, too much time worrying what others think. Maybe we shouldn't do that. Maybe we should let our experiences colour us, one by one, for the world, or you, or just a few, to see. 

And I, for one, am happy for my graffiti. I'm happy for the experiences that have shaped and changed my life, and I'm grateful for every day that I get to have new ones. Good or bad, just living life is such a blessing, such an opportunity to find new passion, to realize new things. To embrace yourself while constantly using your experiences to strive for even better is to love life. 

There is so, so much to love.

We all have graffiti. We can't avoid it, and if we try to erase it, there will only be more of it tomorrow. And maybe, if we all embraced it just a little bit more, we'd see ourselves for who we truly are. Past our mistakes, past our scars and pinpricks, past our hurt, our loss, our painful memories:

Beautiful, in our own way.