Travel & Photography

My Last Days in Florida Were Filled with Sadness and Excitement

When one door closes and another opens, the taste can be intensely bittersweet

There’s good reason for Orlando, Florida to be nicknamed “the City Beautiful”, with iconic palm trees, picturesque lakes and ponds, and flowers in bloom everywhere. Way too hot for some, but the weather always suited me just fine, even in the bake-oven summer when a sweat breaks just walking into Publix to get some of their infamously delicious fried chicken or sub sandwiches.

It took the better part of ten years for me to miss the four seasons of my prior life up in the North. Even now, I’m happy to visit once in a while to see falling leaves and snow, for just a short time, but then I want to get right back to my beloved tropics.

A favorite activity from my years living in the Orlando area was simply to take walks in the many lovely parks, or in quaint neighborhoods, and snap photos of the flowers and foliage. Checking out people’s houses can be fun as well, with their myriad of designs and landscaping features.

On any day, if I was sad or feeling stressed out about life, I would take one of my walks and it would always make me feel better. Exercise and beauty. What could be better?

Thanks to being able to plug photos into my PlantSnap app, I started to learn the names of many of the flowers. Some might not care about the names, but as a lover of words I often find the names quite interesting: bougainvillea, hibiscus, azalea, hydrangea, oleander, spiderwort, the phallic-looking bottlebrush, the majestic princess flower, royal beautyberry, lovely lantana, the iconic flaming torch, pretty peregrina and so many others.

The wide variety of flowers that are able to thrive and survive in the subtropics in Central Florida include over 4,700 species of native or naturalized plants, according to The Plant Atlas from the University of South Florida. So, this gave me plenty to explore on my soul-rejuvenating walks.

Like this splendiferous spiderwort.

Sometimes, identifying flowers can be a bit difficult. This next one looks quite similar to the wild iris, but it also closely resembles the fortnight lily. Hmm, I guess we can settle on the fact that it is merely beautiful.

In my last couple of months living in Florida, armed with the knowledge that I would soon be embarking on a journey to a new country, I stepped up on my photo expeditions even more — a way to take it all with me, and what better way is there than to take scads of photos.

Bromeliads, for one, can be pretty interesting to encounter and photograph. This particular species could be nicknamed alien autopsy. Don’t you think? No offense to any aliens who might be reading this.

Spiky, sprawling pineapples belong to the bromeliad family as well:

One oasis to be found in the heart of the Orlando area is Mayor Carl T. Lanford Park and the adjacent Dickson Azalea Park — full of beauty and many old sprawling trees.

I’m far less adept at taking photos of trees or identifying their likeness, but I gave it my best shot.

It’s a wonder that some of these can even stay standing. At times, of course, some do eventually give way and fall over.

Florida can be a pretty wacky state to live in, no doubt about it, and Orlando is no different. Due to its wide disparity of wealth, it can often be a difficult place to make a living for the regular ol’ Joe… or JoAnn.

Tourists and multi-millionaires live in close proximity to the down-and-out — the homeless, the drug-dealers, prostitutes and people strung out for one reason or another. This feeds into a relatively high rate of crime.

Many people roam the city who are clearly mentally insane. I’ve lived in places where such people were much more well taken care of, so it always saddened me.

Visitors and newcomers to Orlando are often shocked by how many people wander the streets strung out on crack, heroine or other drug of choice, especially young pretty girls who succumb to selling their bodies for their next hit. Some head to the city full of ideals but end up tragically falling into despair.

Despite all this, I still love the city and miss it all the time and consider it to be one of the best places I’ve ever lived. When it came time to leave for Trinidad and Tobago, where my husband had the great fortune to inherit a house from his late mother, I was both excited to move on, but quite sad to leave.

The initial lure of theme parks tends to wears off quickly for most new Floridians. Instead, I’m much happier living in close proximity to the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other.

There is the weather, of course. Running around in shorts and sandals without having to bundle up ever, and of course the year-round beauty and greenery.

There is a bit of a cooling off period in the “winter” but it’s still nothing like Northern winter — nothing a jacket and a pair of pants (yes, I do own one or two of those) won’t cure.

Tampa can be reached in well under two hours driving time. Jacksonville is about two hours while Miami can be reached in roughly four. I’ve explored St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Cassadaga, Cocoa Beach, Clearwater, Melbourne, West Palm and the Everglades, and many places in between.

And then there is the fact that Florida is just messed-up enough to allow me to feel right at ease. No perfection needed here. Floridians wear their pain on their sleeves, and aren’t shy about sharing their grievances.

And so, moving on was difficult, yet the allure and pull of Trinidad and Tobago called.

Moving on seems to be a central theme in my life. Since the age of seventeen, I haven’t spent more than roughly three years at any one time living in the same place. Not exactly on purpose. I certainly never planned it this way. At times I’ve felt like life was living me, rather than me living life.

I’ve lived in mansions and million-dollar apartments, and I’ve lived on skid row and been homeless with hardly a penny to my name — yes, I too, have been one of those people strung out from living too much life.

It took a good many years for my brain to catch up with my soul.

Having lived in quite a few different places now, I’m pretty familiar with what it’s like to end one chapter of life and go onto another. On one hand, there is the glorious anticipation of heading somewhere fresh and new — new people, new experiences, new surroundings. On the other, there is the bittersweet lure of the familiar and the melancholy of saying goodbye. And that is never easy.

Thanks for reading this photo story here at In Living Color. Do check out these other amazing stories as well:

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