an open letter to florida

dear florida,

you are the land of my birth where palm trees, beaches, strip malls, humidity, and tourists make up your many landscapes. people automatically love you it seems. the very mention of your name, no matter where i am, brings out the daydreamer in anyone that asks me where i am from. indeed, my sanity is often questioned by my decision to have left you. but these daydreamers don't understand. they think that you are warm and loving with a very laid back personality and a voice made out of the sound of waves and seagulls. these people honestly think that to live with you is to inhabit a state of perpetual relaxation and where mickey mouse and cinderella stroll hand-in-hand down well manicured and extremely clean sidewalks and every night there is a parade.

i know better.

we have had a very volatile relationship over the past forty years. me hating you for your conservative, unfair, and oppressive stances against people who are anything but "normative" and you not caring for anyone but the rich and religious while stealthily breaking your own moral codes in the many rest stops that dot your landscape along I75 or I275. unwisely, you elected jeb who nearly ruined you and now you have charley sneaking around the ruins of any type of dignity you might have had had you really thought about what pain and damage you have caused. you allowed katherine harris and her ilk to steal an election thus opening the door to the eight years of hell this nation has endured. i even saw you prohibiting voters at the polls like the fascist you know you want to be. yes florida, you have made some bad decisions in the past; and even at this moment, you are still making them. i suppose you always will. but i was surprised last night florida. when i hesitantly checked the polls i noticed that a voice of reason was announcing itself in the results that i was looking at. when the final tally was in and i saw that your color was blue i must say that i was proud. are you learning something florida? or was this a moment of temporary insanity on your part...a bad choice made while drunk that you will regret the next morning? either way, it doesn't matter. i am glad you are blue and at least in this historic moment you're not the biggest asshole on the block. for that: i thank you.

does this mean that all is forgiven? does this mean that a new leaf has been turned over? certainly not. i am not coming back to you florida...i still do not trust you and i never will. but i am proud of this one moment. for once i am not cursing your name and regretting our association with each other...i am sure it will go back to "normal" in a day or two but at least in these five minutes i can smile and say that "yes, i do know you."

cq