A Runner Up: on my relationship to Kissimmee

Kissimmee pushes and pulls and sighs so much that it has become more and more difficult to leave and to want to leave. It functions by being settled and beautiful on the surface, for the unknown to admire on first glance. Downtown, these sidewalks are tired, used to holding up the weight of the city’s admirerers, the huddled masses enamored with the sleek curve of a skyscraper. Someone has to maintain appearances and save face in the wake of the other hoods, ignored and simmering with angst.

And for a while it did so, continuously, year after year, without complaint. Eventually, the advantages for the naked eye outweighed the disadvantages, and you could take the beauty, the prosperity and cleanliness, and run with it. Sometimes I held on to the sheen, afraid to let go and face the consequences of the other city.



But now it feels so weary and fractured. When we go out, we seek destinations, places to transport us from the reality within our homes.

Every other place is just that: a place, so indistinguishable that I rarely remember names, and instead focus on physical landmarks.

It is a familiar sigh. I noticed it in the morning. There is dreariness, I didn’t recognize until it began to get colder. The faces I now see seem somber, pensive at times, but mostly asleep while awake. They too are going through the motions. It’s a familiar sight but certainly not comforting in its familiarity. What are they all yearning for?

I can recognize that my particular annoyance is masking something else, or a number of things, that I have not yet faced: my lack of full-time employment, my loss of friendships (2 more are leaving me to go up north), a general loneliness despite being surrounded by family.

You have that one or those few places you love but the rest of it is unsatisfying and the lack weighs heavily on your mind, reminding you of other places and people and things. The lack is there so much, my assumptions of these other things are nearly tangible. Sometimes, I think that if I slip far enough into my own psyche, I can eventually end up at some fantasy that other people encounter as reality.