Dear Holly II

I’ve noticed: both states I’ve lived in are sinkholes. Maybe every place is like this, but it’s a strange coincidence. It is very easy to get stuck in these places, easy to fall into a lull that one is too deep—too blind to get out of. And not only stuck, but sinking. Not only sinking, but in a fifty foot deep hole that is inescapable. Inescapable because these people that fall into the lull are stuck in the washed-up-menial-job-holding-going-to-the-bar-every-night lifestyle. You walk into this person’s life and the preface happens, “I was so drunk” “I got so high” and then you know. And then you know that this person is going to live in this shitty tourist town with nothing going on except bars. It just so happens instead of being stuck in your parents’ house for ten years longer than you should and dropping out of college in the first year sinkhole in Indiana, Florida is worse. The sinkhole of Florida is a giant costume ball. Every person has the job of being the costumed crusader in customer service positions. And instead of dropping out of college the first year, college students usually drop out in the second or third, smack dab in the middle when they realize that they want to be a character in a tourist attraction for the rest of their lives. The rut of the century. Working in some perverted game of who is the most interesting? The schoolhouse? Carriages? Alligator Farm? A chocolate shop factory? Who wins? Who cares? Everything is a fantasy-land here. Here is no responsibility, no worries, no real world with progression and self-betterment. Only ruts and wigs and garb no one should wear past their last trick-or-treating outing on Halloween. This doesn’t sound like the life for me. I need nature. Mountains. Open skies. Dainty landscapes. So much fresh air. I want to stand tall on peaks and tall through spines and feel like I am making the most of my adulthood. I will get into the world and feel the earth and explore in the purest and truest way, without garb or blindness holding me in one space, hovering.