Do you ever think about coming back?

She looked off at the roaring ocean. I looked down at my hands in the sand. I knew what Katy’s question meant. I had been waxing poetic about Cocoa Beach for ages. Hell, I championed our spring break trip to my favorite sleepy surf town.

There, our second night on the hotel beach, we hid at the edge of the dunes. We nestled in long, rustling sea oats that sheltered us from wind that carried sand into our eyes. I could feel the grains under my contacts. The other tourists had left at dusk. It was just our group in deep twilight and our beers were warm – all waiting for a rocket launch. It was on its fourth delay.

I thought about her question and its obvious answer. Nestled my butt a little further into the sand to keep me warm. I forget that Cocoa Beach nights are chilly. My drug rug can only do so much. The Kinks whispered out of the dying portable speaker I have strapped to my belt loop. I leaned in, half smiled. A secret between us.

Oh, Katy. I think about it every day.

Katy understands. Like me, she left home after college – Georgia to New York City. I only swapped Florida for Atlanta. It’s a seven and a half hour drive to get to Cocoa Beach from my house. It’s a ten and a half hour drive to get home.

I know she’s asking about Florida in the greater, romantic sense. But I can only think of Cocoa Beach.

It isn't my home town. The central Florida spot has always been about three hours away. My grandparents have lived here for over twenty years. A respite for summer surf camp and Christmas visits and weekends away. It might be the most perfect place in the world.

As a kid, my mom liked to joke I would move here to be a marine biologist, marry a surfer and get white people dreads. I found the white people dreads part deeply upsetting but I certainly yearned for the rest. But I grew up and I left the marine biologist dream behind. I only wanted the water part of the job, anyways. I later chose writing. And I forgot how to surf.

But now I have an entire week with my closest Georgia friends. And I want them to love it on my terms. To get it. Not joke about bringing the Panhandle to my precious territory. I want them to see this place, to understand it. To understand me.

My hand is always hovering over the big red button that says MOVE, Katy joked.

We laughed and laughed about our buttons. The rest of our friends have only lived in Georgia. Few have moved more than a short drive from our parents. This is beautiful, this is wonderful. Their roots are there. But me and Katy propagated to our new homes.

In the past few years I have cultivated an image of really loving Atlanta. This is fine, obviously. I like Atlanta. But I didn't totally plan on being an ambassador for the city. I have two jobs that require me to be invested in place. To know about it and talk about it. The Atlanta love is more a career requirement than anything.

I do like my life in Atlanta. But I think I could like my life anywhere. I ended up in Georgia because of college, Atlanta because of circumstance. Things just shook out that way. I could have easily been a podcast employee in Los Angeles if I had tried a little harder. Atlanta was the path of least resistance.

It’s a beautiful life here. One of friendship, early adulthood and a southern spark. I love it, I do. I romanticize it. I go on inspiration walks and slap away mosquitos and find dive bars to frequent. I tell people this is an underdog town and I want to fight for it.

My hand still hovers over the big red button.

It’s not homesickness. I’ve been homesick since January 2019. That feeling has dulled and faded. No, this is a permanent feeling of wrongness. One that doesn’t go away until I land on a Florida shore.

I do have a narcissistic belief that my connection to the Florida ocean is somehow special and unique. Weeks ago, I told my mother I’d rather die than spend my birthday landbound in Atlanta. She chuckled and said that was clear.

Of course you want to be by the beach. You’re a Florida girl, you’re a cancer. It’s all you’ve ever known.

I exhaled when she called me a Florida girl. I spend every day scared the title will disappear. When my mom says I’m pale from Georgia winters I worry that Florida is a power you can lose, a status that can be revoked.

I don’t know how to negotiate that feeling of wrongness. It’s not like I can ask my other Florida-born friends. The ones I still talk to have fled the state. A lot of them didn’t really feel much connection to it at all. They preferred the big cities, the skyscrapers and brutal winters that come with it.

None of them say they want to die in Florida. None of them panic when they spend more than three months away from the sea. My Georgia friends have grappled with their own wrongness, landing back in their homes with a resolve to make the place better. I admire it greatly. It helps me very little.

So how do I negotiate it? Sometimes when I feel bad I imagine exploding my life. Running to the shore. Leaving career and relationship wreckage in the rearview. In those fantasies it's always blue hour. The water is always warm. The salt air always fills my lungs.

Then I come back to reality. I remember my people and important things like bills, income and not ruining my entire world on a whim. I remember that Cocoa Beach is a conservative town with pricey rents and very few urban luxuries. This almost convinces me.

I offer myself up a month in Cocoa Beach, sometime in the next five years. A treat. A writer’s escape to feel inspired by acai bowls, dolphin pods and a truly glorious tan.

Back in Atlanta, the real world, spring is awake and the air is thick with looming summer. My friend tells me we need to make this the best summer ever. I agree, but I plan on fleeing the city as soon as I can. He says I need to actually be around to make it a great season.

The thought of it makes me nauseous. I think I get depressed in the Atlanta summer. It’s not the winter depression – gray, bedridden malaise. It’s a sort of urgency. The clock is running out. The big red button is getting bigger. The world is alive, but am I? Or am I wasting my own time?

I tried to mimic the beachy feeling at Piedmont Park, Atlanta’s crown jewel. Like Central Park but not as nice. I biked to the free Dogwood Festival. Wore a bikini top with boots and shorts. My 1970s festival best. Laid on a towel near the bluegrass stage. It was a gorgeous day. But I couldn’t feel the sea breeze. The wind was just wind. No salt in it. My hair sagged. My skin felt flat. I only needed a little bit of sunscreen.

I miss my $40 Sanuk flip flops and Ron Jon anklet and I miss the dry-rotted restaurant patios overlooking a touristy beach. I miss the shitty toenail polish because my mom believes our feet must be colorful if they’re seen all the time. I miss ahi tuna nachos and optional shirts and the outright refusal to shower just in case I get one more chance to be in the sea before I sleep. I miss running into the waves at 11 p.m. listening to Free Bird and feeling it. Really feeling it.

That quiet, windy, beach night. We got an alert from my Cape Canaveral launch app after hours of waiting. Launch scrubbed. Come back next time. We would be gone by the rescheduled takeoff, back in our shitty landlocked apartments. The trip slowed from there. Everyone grew tired of $5 frozen daiquiris spiked with Svedka. The mealy whipped cream lost its novelty. Real life grew ever closer. I recorded videos of the waves six times in case of personal emergency.

Our final vacation day I split from the group to visit my parents, who had made it in town the night before. We went to Coconuts on the Beach. We tanned all day. We drank all night. The wrongness went away. Just sun and sand in its place. In the hotel I jotted down ideas for a beach town horror movie. All of my art is set in the sunshine state. Florida, my great muse.

I know I’ll die in Florida. But I don’t know if I can wait. That night, I climbed into the hotel bed for my last beach sleep. The sheets were chock full of sand. My hands had two new sunspots. My swimsuits were still damp.

It was a perfect sleep. I dreamt of coming back.