The place where I grew up, is a place that I will never forget. It is a place that made me realize how I wanted to live my life, a place that makes me feel like I could become someone important and a place that shows how people could also be so blinded by the beauty of this city to realize the true struggle within it.

I have lived in a small town, by the beach, named Ventura for 18+ years. Ventura is a beautiful little city on the coast, a place where you can walk to the beach in less than 5 minutes and a place where you can really feel at home. A little city, where the shops are warm and inviting and the people are friendly. The city is not as bad as it seems until you reach the Avenue. The Avenue is where I grew up, where I spent most of my childhood. It is a place where everyone was either friends or enemies. Mornings were safe, yet once the sun went to down, the nights would give you bad vibes.

I have many loving memories of living in Ventura, from playing on the streets with the neighborhood kids, to going on hikes around Two Trees, but growing up on the Avenue, some memories have been bad and have grown into a part of me. They were mostly distracted by the beach or the shops on Main St, the main place where you’d find tourists and the wealthy. Mostly people never crossed onto the Avenue because it was mostly the gang filled part of Ventura. Ventura is a city full of tourists and joy, but also danger and disaster. It is a city that had slowly started to pull itself together.

Ventura will always be my home. Even with all these memories of good and bad, I have learned that it is a city that pushed me to succeed. I look at the way it tries to help each other out and I appreciate that. I look at how it tries to change the way it treats one another and I appreciate that. Home is where the heart is and even though my heart has been somewhat damaged by this place due to bad memories, It has simply grown into a part of me. It has filled in that gap it has once made and filled it with happiness and success. Ventura is a place where I know I can come to and find it just the same. Years will go by and this city will grow and become something better.