PAPER I HAD WRITTEN FOR A COLLEGE COURSE THAT I WAS TAKING, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
Discovering Your Own Lifespan
I have made many choices that have impacted my life in a major way and one of the most recent was my move to Florida. I moved here in 05 and was fortunate enough to experience my first four hurricanes I had moved here from Ohio where I had lived all my life. I am from the Dayton area, born and raised. I came to Florida to visit and meet my father for the first time in my life. He asked me if I would move down to Florida so that we could get to know each other. He gave me permission to live at his place until I got my own. It was an exciting time for me as it felt like I was going to start my life over. I was currently living around a rough environment that was full of drugs. I had dropped out of college and at that time didn't have a car or job. My life was not going anywhere at the time, so making the decision for a new start was not a hard choice for me to make. After I had moved here, I did not know how to adjust with family life. He and his wife were constantly arguing and I always felt as if I were the cause of their arguments. His wife kept dropping hints that she wanted me to leave and one day she gave me a deadline. She knew that I was not making enough money to get my own place but fine, whatever. One day she had called me out back and reminded me of my deadline, then she told me that her daughter's therapist had agreed that my living there was contributing to her daughter's bad grades in school. Um, ok! I threw my clothes in my car and drove away.
I remember how hot the first two summers were and how I thought that I would never get used to the heat. I had to take two showers a day because I was sweating so bad and did not want to stink. Then I experienced driving thru my first rainfall here in Florida. The rain falls straight down here. It is so humid in this state with no cooling breeze unless it is about to storm or it is winter time. I have noticed a big difference in the change in the climate here compared to Ohio. When I had first visited here in October, I remembered chuckling to myself at the sight of seeing people in Florida walking around wearing sweaters and coats. Now that I have been here for a few years, I find myself having to turn on the heater every time that the temperature drops below 65. The humidity of the climate here in Florida does not allow my arthritis to mess with me as much. My body does not ache as bad as it did when I lived in the Ohio climate however, sometimes I have asthma attacks and it becomes harder to breathe.
I have made a few friends since coming to Florida and I would say that my social life has changed but, it is hard to say whether it has changed for the better or for the worst. I am changing my ways and I can tell that I am growing up but part of me feels as if I do not belong in these surroundings. I look around and do not see any older cars or beat up houses and the occassional pile of debri, to show that the area is real and that it is lived in.
My life has had many twist and turns and I know that it is not going to straighten out anytime soon but, I have proven to myself that I am a survivor. I know that many changes are taking place n the world today, I am just hoping that no one that I care about has to come to the lonely, dark place where I have been stuck for so long. But hey, I am done crying about it and now I am just trying to make it better.
