Dear Florida,

I have lived under your sky all my life, and I have only one question: WHY.

If you’ve never experienced summer in Florida, you haven’t experienced true summer at all. Because summer is not, as most of us are lead to believe, the joyful, carefree, beautiful time where anything is possible and going to the beach is the only thing on your agenda. Instead, it is a most unique time of year where you become like cookie dough and the sun like a 700 degree oven (about 400 degrees too hot for cookies, if you don’t bake). The only reason I use “like” is because of one key difference between you and the cookie. The cookie has a glorious, delicious purpose for being baked, even if it does get a little burnt. Contrarily, as you sit there getting crispy in the Florida sun, you will wonder why you are here. There is no purpose. Only pain.

I’ve often wondered if there’s some kind of hypnotising quality to the Sunshine State. No one in their right mind would come here of free will—and yet people continually move here to “retire” (AKA burn for the rest of their existence) while the people who live here find themselves, for varying inexplicable reasons, unable to leave, even though it’s the only thing they ever talk about.

For those insane enough to actually enjoy the fire raining down from above, even they find themselves thwarted when every afternoon, without fail, the demon sun is trapped behind thick, dark clouds, and torrential rain pours down. It was sunny one minute earlier. No, there is no logical explanation.

Now there is no happiness anywhere, for the rain lasts only a moment, but brings humidity that sits upon your shoulders and does not leave for the rest of the day. The clouds linger but bring no relief.

There is only one answer: stay inside and pump the AC. Save yourself before it’s too late and you turn into a lobster or pass out from the oppressive humidity. Even better, stay away from Florida altogether.

Summer is a lie.

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