(Google image – Johnson Square)

It’s Veteran’s Day, 2019. I am not a veteran.

The office is open. On my lunch hour, I go for a walk, hear the strains of drums and bagpipes on Broughton Street and an atonal siren that repeats and repeats. It sounds eerie, but it does not fill me with dread. I walk through Reynolds Square, down East Saint Julian Street and then to Johnson Square, where part of the original Cape Fear was filmed. So many squares.

The dissonant siren rises up again like a warning, but I am not afraid. I welcome and embrace it as part of who I am. This is me – off-key. After three years, I feel my feet finally making contact with the pavement on these Savannah streets, like I have never felt before. I am here. I am alive. I am not perfect or whole or healed, but I exist, and I am worthy. I am a part of this world. No one can tell me otherwise. I belong, somehow.