Dear Florida Water,
Please, let us explain. It’s not you. It’s us.
We say we love you — that you’re the best thing about our state. We wax poetic about your beauty and how being near you is one of the loveliest things in our lives.
But then we kick you in the teeth and expect you to be ever-available to us like a booty call on house arrest.
Likely you’re starting to see us for what we really are, though: Abusers. Our toxicity can’t be contained, and you keep bearing the brunt. It’s inexcusable. We know.
We take for granted that you’ll be there when we want a refreshing swim, a fun boat ride, clean seafood to eat, or a scenic backdrop from which to show everyone on social media how great life is at the moment; us together, serene, blissful.
You awe us with the life that thrives inside of you. You soothe us with your gentle caress. You offer up food. Your freshwater is necessary for all of life, and you’re totally cool with the job. And in return we throw rocks at you like you’re the protagonist in a Shirley Jackson story.
We don’t want to do it. We really do love you. It’s just that we love ourselves more. Honest though, baby, we don’t mean it. We never mean it.
Which isn’t to say we promise not to do it again.
It’s just that sometimes, too much rain combined with outdated and ineffectual infrastructure means we need you to shoulder the burden.
It’s just that our elected governing officials and big businesses generally agree to gamble with your well-being by taking calculated risks, and things get out of control, y'know? And then we get algae blooms or a sinkhole that leaks “slightly radioactive” water into your aquifer. Or we get a major ongoing oil spill.
And we poison you, ourselves and lots of other living things that have no stake an any of our self-important ventures.
We make decisions based on increasing our bottom lines regardless of the risk it poses to you. Sure, the binds we find ourself in are foreseeable, but life is about risks, right?
But you don’t care about that. By now you must be getting tired of our bullshit. We do what we do, we feel badly after, and then we do it again.
We’re sorry you have to be the Tina to our Ike.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2016.