A Florida Girl At Heart.

South Florida is feeling more and more like home. And it seems like soon it will be. This is weird to me. I am Joe (sie) New Yorker. How weird will it be to be Miss Florida again? I will no longer rely on subways and cab drivers to take me to work and happy hour and brunch and clubbing, but will instead drive a car, my car, something I haven't done in 2 years to wherever I want to go. I always was a terrible driver.

I will forgo SeamlessWebbing it three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner and instead rely on going to a grocery store, something else I haven't done in 2 years, and actually cooking for more than major holidays. I will live in a home or apartment that it at least approximately 4 times bigger than my cozy 2 bedroom and I may or may not have a totally unfriendly doorman that, after months and months of living in my building, still asks where I live when I walk through the revolving doors. I will not go out every night to a crowded venue filled with investment bankers, traders and the occasional fashionista to be greeted with attitudes filled with 99% pretencion and 1% actual interest. I will not be with my NYC BFF's 24/7 as I have been over the past 2 years. I won't have a bottle of Pinot waiting for me, accompanied by my amazing boy roommate when I come home after yet another broken heart or shitty day. I will not see snow. Every guy I date will not be a banker, or a trader, or a hedge fund manager or private equity guy. I will not run into Ivy or his friends in the elevator of our shared building. Nor will I run into ETF at our favorite after work happy hour spot. Or Mr. Nice Guy when I hit up his hipster hangouts. Or even Mr. PE on the days when he is in the city and not Miami. I won't walk streets every day where I get pushed around and cursed at every 5 minutes for trying to walk and mind my own business. I won't have a Starbucks' on every corner to curb my $5 a cup caffiene cravings. Or an ex in every neighborhood I can call to call to meet me for drinks when I get bored or everyone else is busy.

Instead I will live a normal, or whatever normal can be when you aren't in the city, life with normal people who have no clue what B and T, investment bankers, F and R's, slumming it or guidos are. People who may actually go to church on Sundays and not care what celebrity they sat next to at Tenjune or Beatrice on Saturday night. People who settle down before they hit 35, not because they feel it's time, but because they fall in love. People who have no concept of serial dating, or the dating as a game of commodities reality, and probably don't even know or care what "bonus time" means.

My life will be a complete 180 from what it is now. I will most likely become a complete 180 from who I am now. This will probably be a good thing. I will most likely move here and at some point meet a boy who will make me his world, and who I will make mine. I will most likely fall in love, because, unlike in NYC, falling in love is not only acceptable, but commonplace here. After I fall in love, I will probably settle down and people from up north simply won't believe it when they hear it. And maybe I'll even get married. Something that just doesn't happen in the city. My New York City friends will come to my wedding, in their couture dresses and toast a "goodbye" to the me they used to know and toast a hallalujah to the wedding they never in a million years thought they would attend. I will probably have a life none of my New York City friends will ever believe I could live, since I have been "so New York" as long as they've known me. I will be happy. I will be successful. I will be content. And. I will be so. Not New York. I know this is not only a possibility, but a probability. One that will make all of my city friends laugh and with heads taken aback and eyes wide open say, "what the fuck happened to the Torrie we knew"? But. Deep down. I have never been a real New Yorker. I have always been a Florida girl at heart. Whether I acted the part or not.

Changes in attitudes, changes in latitudes, nothing remains quite the same, through all of the islands, through all of the highlands, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane...-Jimmy Buffett.
LMM