We watched Discovery piggyback a Boeing 747 against a cotton candy sky from our hospital window on an early April morning. The shuttle would soon discover its final resting place in Washington D.C.—the area I had left in 2008 to move to the Space Coast. 

An inhospitable landscape altered forever by a manifest destiny to the stars—combined with the latest of Florida’s boom-and-bust cycles—left many uncertain of what lay ahead for us as the space shuttle era came to an end. Yet the end of this chapter was a new beginning for my husband and I, as we watched Discovery disappear into the sky like we had many times before. That morning marked the birth of our daughter.

Our stories tend to take on a physical presence. They are a labyrinth of countless layers overlapping, and intricate, weaving paths, only separated by time—and as intimidating a force as they are welcoming. I found the physicality of my story coming together on the day I reached Florida twelve years ago. Today, I find myself in awe of the amount of new ground I have found, and as I look onward, there remains so much left to cover.

I am, then, as I am today, and will always be.

The second day after my daughter’s birth granted me this realization. I walked, overwhelmed and exhausted, to the Indian River’s edge wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into. Months later, while my husband fished from that same river’s edge, double-rainbow overhead, I would realize it again as I held her in my arms. Even while driving along the banks of the river, sun shining, brackish water still flooding and eroding the pavement weeks after Irma had come and gone, the realization would strike me.

Florida, on the ever-captivating Space Coast, was the unlikely way I discovered and grounded myself. Roots worn and decayed by years of moving in my youth and early adulthood, I wandered into the state I least wanted to be, at the worst possible time. In a place filled with people looking to fill some deeper part of themselves with escape and fantasy, I suppose I was no exception. At the time, though, it felt pre-determined that I should experience the exact opposite of all I had dreamt of for my life. 

“God’s Waiting Room” became my waiting room—for all the better places I knew I’d move to in the inevitable when: When we saved enough to leave; When my husband graduated college; When we got married; When one of us found the perfect job somewhere else. Years of ‘when’ came and went. 

When ‘when’ became too much of a struggle, I opened myself to the experience of the outside world. What started as a coping mechanism became a curiosity— to look deeper into the place that made me want to be anywhere but here. 

Becoming accustomed to the encumbering baggage of a lifetime—with its rips and tears—and the collective denial of a fraying marriage allowed me the freedom to walk for miles down sidewalks to the river, soaking up the unexpected wonder that a miserable, decaying suburb could provide. 

I did not know how to face my problems—I knew how to walk away from them. 

An unlikely healer, these walks—through the last place I wanted to be—saw an evolution take place. A gradual transition to awe and gratitude, even if I didn’t always like what I saw. Even in the times I longed to be elsewhere.

When I think about these broad, nondescript streets, half-empty strip malls, and desolate, urban spaces, the feeling is indescribable.

Walking down Fiske Boulevard, discarded litter tells stories measured in feet. Wawa cups turn into Swisher Sweets, losing lotto scratchers, Capri Suns and candy wrappers. Behind the Chinese buffet next to the Family Dollar (two hold-outs supporting an otherwise empty strip mall) a potted papaya tree covered in fruit holds strong, and a bouncy horse guards the back service door. Shoe marks imprint the concrete sidewalks from long ago, like Armstrong’s steps on the moon. 

The night sky fills with fire while I watch through palm trees and moss-draped live oak. My feet (as always) covered in ants as bats whiz by my head, only illuminated by the light of the launch. Feeling earthbound as I listen to the SpaceX feed, the control room fills with cheers from people who have likely never stepped foot on these sidewalks. I watch until the glow of the booster fades into nothingness, swallowed into the vast void of night, disappearing so far into another place I will never go.

Photography has always been about how I see Florida—how I try to make sense of our complicated history and how it seeps into today. But all along the way I found it impossible to extricate myself from what seemed intriguing about this place.

We are a state born out of myth, molded and reshaped, developed and re-sold as paradise.

Fantasy lands. Tropical beaches. Rockets to the stars.

There are places in Florida where all the complexities of life are victims to their landscaping—manicured and fenced out of sight. Some design neighborhoods that afford the “opportunity” to live in a version of the past that sanitizes any semblance of oppression, chaos, and violence. Those who still cling to their wish to “make America great again” will continue reshaping and cherry-picking history for the sake of leisure—Florida provides plenty of evidence of that.

However, there are also places like ours that are less leisurely. Barely held together, last glimpses of another time. Flat wastelands of asphalt and concrete built atop what was believed to be flat wastelands of sand and scrub, never realizing the natural paradise of Florida wasn’t a paradise ever intended for any of us. 

Florida was, then, unlike what it is today, and may never be again – though we continue to find ourselves repeating the same themes from our past. And yet…

We are both a place and a self, caught in the overwhelming sense of what was, the promises and uncertainties of what lies beyond, and not knowing quite yet how to handle the present.

To call somewhere home is to critique, yet love, to challenge and be challenged. It is opening yourself to the full experience; not allowing yourself to be limited by what you want to see or what it wants you to see. To faithfully call somewhere home will expose you to an understanding that will stretch across the scope of your life. Personal relationships, while difficult for me at times, became more fulfilling the more I felt at home. Meaning became easier to find, the more I felt at home.

And through that—to someone who had always felt rootless—an equally rootless, transitory state became home.