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Place

“Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.”

            -John Ed Pearce

As writers, we’ve been told that setting is a necessary component of imaginative writing. It not only establishes where and when a story takes place, but also becomes an essential part of the characters. And I would argue that setting has an intimate relationship with the author as well. Not all writers enjoy imbuing their stories with autobiographical facts, but I think it’s inevitable that who you are and where you come from will play an important role in what you are able to write.

 That being said, when I was younger I never dreamed of returning to the place I grew up; in high school I couldn’t wait to get away—far, far away—from Florida. I was the fledgling that’d caught scent of a world beyond my sticks and mud and was ready to stumble out of the nest, fly across the ocean. When you live in one place for so long, you start to forget what it means to you; you stop noticing the particulars. I thought Florida was stunting my growth, suffocating my muse, and obscuring my potential. The first time I tried to run away, I only lasted a year. I decided on Boston for all the wrong reasons (mostly my flight-is-right syndrome), and in the end I returned to my nesting grounds. The second time I left home I was more prepared and I think I had some vague understanding that if I left, this time Florida would be coming with me.

Moving to New York wasn’t an easy choice. My first attempt at leaving had taught me that I was far more attached to my home than I wanted to admit. But there was still this desire in me to get away from what I was comfortable with. After having lived here for a year, I can admit that I feel an even deeper connection to the place I came from.  Florida has infected my writing in ways that I never would have recognized before. And I think it is because I’ve established this distance between myself and my home, both physically and psychologically. The beach, the ocean, the smell and feel of salt air will always be in my blood. I know the heat, the humidity, the way cicadas sound, the darkness of a power outage during a tropical storm. These are a part of me and they will seep into my fiction whether I intend it or not. The longer I am away from them, the more I feel them calling to me like an abandoned mother. I think I will go back—I want to go back. Not now, not after I graduate. But eventually, when I’m ready, I’ll go back to the place that made me.