**A Journal entry dated 2 months ago. Here’s a message that still rings true.                           To: My FL fam.**

I’m packing away my life once again.

People often ask me what it feels like to move around so often. It depends on the situation I suppose. Sometimes, packing feels like running away. The pressure to get out mounts until you’re bursting through the doors with the last box or suitcase in hand. You peer up and look through the rear-view with a smirk on your face, realizing that the only time you’ll look back on this moment is to relive the feeling of fleeing for freedom.

Packing this time didn’t feel this way. This time packing was bittersweet. I cried a bunch; sobbed tears of joy, tears of sadness, tears of excitement, and tears of nervousness. I remember how I felt the day I first viewed my current FL apartment as this “potential” FL apartment, which later turned home (then turning in a place I never wanted to go to). I remember telling myself that I wasn’t going to be moving for a while after this. My roommate and I felt refreshed starting over in a more roomy place with better lighting, better neighbors, a better location, and simply put, just a better way of living. That’s when life happened. It shattered all and any hope of me wanting to continue this life here in Florida on my own, because in reality that’s exactly where I was, not only on my own but also all alone.

Between having to deal with my close friend/roommate’s relapse  (emotionally and financially), the feeling of being alone, and missing what has always been important to me, my family and close childhood friends I’ve had enough. My 11 years in FL haven’t been wasted. I’ve experienced so much; adventures, moments I would’ve never had if not for living in the “Sunshine State”. Still, I feel like it’s now time to go on home. I haven’t been doing anything here that I couldn’t be doing back home. Every time I go back home I see my mother just a tad bit older. These are the years that I can’t waste away because who knows how much longer I have with her. So I back home is where I go because for now, it’s where I feel like I need to be.

The irony is making a close circle of friends in the last few weeks before my departure. As I pack up the last bits of my life I reminisce on these last few weeks and although I’m sad to be leaving, I’m happy that I leave with the knowledge that I did make a family away from family. This family came to be unexpected and formed without me even noticing what was taking place. The people who kept tabs on me while I was sick. Those, that when they knew that I was undergoing tremendous amounts of stress, made sure that I remembered to breath, and to look at the glass half full, bubbly, and fun. These are the same people who would listen, understand… and who didn’t judge. These are the people that no matter the distance, I’ll always have my Florida family; a home away from home.

From the Southwest coast over to the Southeast coast, pieces of my heart left behind like bread crumbs.