I used to like the color pink and every other girl in the class liked purple. But the next year pink was the "new black" and I was accused of being like everyone else.

It's been almost ten years now that I've been in love with sailing ships and pirates. Last summer I was to go for a month on a reproduction of The Bounty and literally learn the ropes. But that fell through. There's something in my soul that yearns for the ocean, for the creak of the mainsail. I've wanted to spend so much time on board a ship that, like Jack Sparrow, I can never regain my land legs.

Now Pirates of the Caribbean came out and everyone is suddenly thrilled with ships and pirates. I will not have fingers pointing at me. I did not follow the crowd. The crowd followed me to the shore.

And as I sail away with my sea legs keeping me steady, the crowd will be splashing about on the coast wanting a freedom that I've yearned for my whole life.

To learn the sea. To see that horizon. To go where ever the winds may take me. To come back to land only when salt water becomes my drink, my skin is blackened with the sun and hardened by the wind, and my hands roughened by the ropes.

"Restless and deep and before I can sleep,
I will go where the black waters roll."