Fragments

The Past

I dreamed of Florida again today. The hot sun on my face, the gardens on my bedroom wall, the salt water in my mouth. I dream of Disneyworld, of the giant wizard gift shop, and the cold fried chicken on the beach. I look back at that sunshine, of the waves and the violent storms, and of me smiling in all of it. I was happy then I think. I had to be - I was a child. I was a child who had no cares, no worries, and nothing truly bad had yet happened to me. I was only a young girl, running through up and down the beach, boogie board in hand, burning my small feet in the sand. I smiled then. I sang. The world was so peaceful then because I thought I knew what I was supposed to be. I thought I would always be as I was then - happy and carefree. 

But then I moved to the Midwest and things became so incredibly terrible then. Bad things started to happen to me and I grew further and further away from the child I was once because she was the weakness that no longer guaranteed my survival. The time between use grew apart. I no longer like the things she liked. I no longer swim, sing, or run up and down beaches. The part of my soul she once lived in is now deserted from her death. 

The first few years after I moved away the only thing I wanted to go was go back. The Midwest was only a temporary stopping point - one that lasted ten years. The last time I went to Florida was a year ago. I saw again the town I once lived in. My once and only home, the streets I would bike on, the friends I used to have all seemed artificial in my new eyes. My body had grown used to the cold damp weather of the PNW. I could no longer tolerate the hot Florida heat. I saw my old house, I saw again the giant wizard gift shop, and my mother and I ate cold fried chicken on the beach at an AirBnb called the "Bali Bungalow".  My mother and I stood at the beach at night, watching out into the distant moon dark horizon, and cleansed ourselves with the saltwater. I stared off into the night sea for a long time because I did not want to lose that moment because I knew that it would be the last good memory I would have of her. The cold air came in. I closed my eyes to the crashing of the waves and I breathed in the salt air. I thought I had been cleansed. I had returned to exactly where I had started - a cycle finished. 

Though I look back on those memories still. I see me making weird potions at Libby Lu, of browsing my books in the Florida room, and of painting flowers on my bedroom walls. I thought that I was so happy then, I was smiling, I was free, and the bad things had no yet happened to me. But I know it is not true. It was only romanticized good memories that I can scarcely remember, because there were never carefree days. The recession hit, my father hurt my mother,  bad things did in fact happen to me, and the early 2000s were ending. How I long to return to a past that never existed in the first place - a past I never had to begin with because I am only historicizing my own nostalgia. A childhood happiness I can never return to because it never existed in the first place.