Member-only story
Pondering the What Ifs
Life and the desire to see what’s next
I was too young and too full of braggadocio and testosterone to think through what I was doing, which is probably the only reason I actually did it.
It was the summer of 2006 in farm country Ohio. I’d just graduated from a small-town high school the day before and was pulling out of my parents’ driveway for the last time.
My ’02 Toyota Celica — from which I’d removed the back seats because it’d seemed like a cool idea to my sixteen-year-old mind— was loaded down with a few things I though I might need for my new life. You know, necessities like fishing poles, tackle boxes, and a boom box. I had a few changes of clothes in there too. I was headed somewhere warmer, away from a volatile family and personal situation. I’d decided I was going to South Florida.
I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know anyone in Florida who’d give me a place to stay. I didn’t have a job lined up. I had about a thousand bucks to my name. All I knew was that I had to escape. And I knew that if I didn’t do it then, I probably never would.
The roadside vistas grew less familiar as I left my county, my state, my friends and dysfunctional family, and my life behind. But sentimentality was the last thing on my mind. Fuck that place. I was outta there and the world was my…
