Orlando....

So, I'm having mixed feelings right now.

The reason? I'm going on vacation in May. To Orlando, FL.

Shouldn't be anything but happy feelings, right? You would think, anyway.

But Orlando is so.....personal, to me.

You see, I moved to Orlando when I was barely 21 years old. I left the security of my Mom's house in Louisiana and moved. Just like that.

No place to live when I got there, no money...nothing. Just Heth, me and a Budget Rental truck with all our stuff in it.

We found a place to live after a week or so...jobs were harder to come by. We struggled and sold EVERYTHING we own at Cash America Pawn and returned shit to WalMart just because we couldn't imagine going back. In November of the year we moved there, we were stopped at a red light and got rear ended by a guy that was going about 50mph. My brand new car? Totaled. We weren't hurt badly...but it was definitely an eye opening experience and I did SO many things wrong.

Within 2 weeks, we had nowhere to live because we couldn't pay rent and were evicted. We ended up going down to West Palm Beach to stay with some friends of ours until we left (in a rental car, no less) to go visit our families for Christmas. When I got to Louisiana, I got a new (used) car and we left around the second week of January to go back to Florida.

Heth's grandfather came down around that time to "visit" us and stayed for 2 weeks...so we had a hotel room to stay in for that time. After that? Homeless again. We spent most of our days trying to find jobs and most of our nights on I-Drive just wandering aimlessly. CityWalk was another favorite spot during that time because we could park for free and just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere.

Around Valentine's Day of that year, we had nothing better to do and went to an O-Town CD signing at the Wal-Mart on John Young Pkwy. That's when we fell in love with those 5 guys. :) I can remember us scrounging together what little bit of money we had to buy their CD so that we could listen to that (along with Black & Blue by Backstreet Boys which Heth had gotten for Christmas) while we were driving aimlessly around Orlando. In fact, the CD Black & Blue was listened to SO much that if I listen to it and close my eyes, I can imagine driving around by Universal Studios and see everything SO clearly.

During this time we literally had NO money. We occasionally would ask our parents to wire us $20...mainly for gas or a pack of cigarettes. We had ONE can of pringles to share...that ONE can lasted us three weeks. At night we would park the car in the WalMart parking lot and take turns napping. In the morning we'd be up and moving again...trying desperately to find a job. We were young and had no REAL job skills...so that wasn't easy. And honestly, finding a job was hard when you had nowhere to go home to at night.

We finally ended up gaining some stability by moving down to West Palm Beach and living with a friend for a year. That stability allowed us to be able to move back to Orlando and spend a WONDERFUL 2 years there with jobs and a stable (but broke) lifestyle. We ended up leaving there after there were 3 hurricanes in 6 weeks back in 2004 (!!!!). Neither of us have been back since then...and it's killed us both.

So I'm a little scared to go back to Orlando.

I don't know what memories it's going to bring back.

Or if it's still "MY" Orlando.

Part of me hopes it isn't...because if it isn't then I won't cling so desperately to such amazing memories.

And yes, they WERE amazing. Even homeless and broke, I had more fun there than I have anywhere else in my life. It was simple and I didn't need anything except my best friend, my car and my city.

I'm a little torn up right now. I don't know what to think or how to feel...

I guess I'll try to temper my expectations and hope that it IS the city I can remember so I can have a blast there...even if it's only for 6 days.