I still have the suitcase from the very first trip I took to Florida. The sweet smell of bubblegum enveloping everything around me is still imaginable to me. The smell and buzz of the airport engrained into my head forever. The pilot gave me a silver airplane pin. I can still remember the smell and feeling of the nighttime Florida air.
My trips to Florida were my fondest memories of childhood. The first trip down there we went to Build a Bear work shop. I made a horse with a coconut bra and a hula skirt and named her flower. We spent countless hours in the pool. We would swim from morning to night, eating our lunches poolside. Beach trips were always amazing. I remember how exciting it was the first time we went to the beach. There were trips to Busch Gardens, I got to take a picture by the Clydesdale. I was obsessed with Corvettes. Grandpa Bernel worked at a car dealership and set it up to where I could sit in one. I was so excited. One time, my Sibling, Taylor, kissed a wild lizard running around the pool and it latched onto their lip. Danny, my youngest sibling, and I howled with laughter. Taylor was screaming. I ripped the lizard off Taylor's lip and still to this day, the scar remains. Danny and I got in trouble.
I remember the dread of waiting for my father and Hellen to come get me and the anxiety that followed the whole way back to Ohio. The death glares Hellen would give me. "You over ate didn't you? You got fat," she would say. It was a whole summer and I was a growing child.
The last time I went down there, I begged my mom to just let me stay, I didn't want to go home. I told of the abuse and everything I was being put through. She didn't even try. She just said "I'll see what I can do."
I'd go down there for summer, Easter and even Christmas break. But by the time I was 12, the trips became nonexistent. I was stuck in existential hell. The wheels of my suitcase still smelled of Florida, of the sand and grass, sometimes I'd sit on the floor, suitcase in my lap and sniff the wheels while I was sobbing.
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Her Inner Strength
SpiritualThis is just details of my life. Me just trying to recall and work through things. I hope someone, somewhere can relate. But I'm more or less treating this as a public journal of the story of my life. The events may not be in order, they're just my...
