“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire and ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”

– Frank Zappa

It’s been years now since I’ve gone back to Florida. I used to go back every summer, after the initial move, but then I got defiant and wouldn’t get on the plane anymore. In my absence, I’ve been able to paint my hometown into some dreamy, distant place, even knowing that I hated every moment I spent there. I can see the beach, the water mirroring the sand and stretching further than I could see, even when I craned my childhood neck to try. The muggy heat and the melting ice cream. The powdery blue driveways that I skinned my knees on and the expansive chewed gum collection wrapped around our swing set’s pole. Nostalgia is going to kill me. I hate all of these things. I should hate all of these things. But when I close my eyes to look at them, she is there, too. Her bleach blonde hair, crunchy from the chlorine and frizzy from the thick air. Her plaid shorts and pink jelly sandals. Her crooked front teeth (she doesn’t care that they’re crooked, but everyone else does). I am horrified to see her because I know what is going to happen to her. I want to scoop her up and put her somewhere else, somewhere that cannot take from her her love of writing stories, riding a bike, eating when she is hungry. But all I can do is see her how she was, radiant in all of her loving sunlight, and be grateful that she existed at all.

When I last went back, I could barely walk right across the sand. My feet sank in at awkward angles and I got frustrated at the way it slowed me down, but then I thought about her laughing at how slow I was going and running across the sand like it was pavement, and then I was laughing, too. The girl that I spent every single day of my childhood with only to lose to distance started up an Etsy shop for her art. I ordered a t-shirt from it; her work was incredible. I wanted something of hers to be near me again. I totally forgot about it until she cancelled the order and I received an email about my refund. I don’t want a refund. I wanted the shirt. I wanted to have her back, to have me back, to be where we were before everything got ruined by everything. But then I thought about us laughing together on our bikes racing down the street of our oval neighborhood, and then I was laughing, too.

I know I cannot go back, and I know that the Florida I’ve made up in my nostalgia did not and never will exist. This does not change the fact that I would go back, though. I would do it all over again. Maybe I could save her this time around.

Until next time,

G.D.