New Smyrna Nights

New Smyrna Beach is the kind of town that photographs well. There is an ocean, palm trees, and sunsets that routinely look like someone got carried away with the saturation slider. People come for a week on vacation, convince themselves they’ve discovered paradise, and then they leave.

For the people who call it home, the place is more complicated. Some never leave. Others leave and keep finding excuses to come back. Paradise looks different when it’s where you grew up, worked, partied, fell in love, and tried to figure out what came next. Having a good time and actually doing well can become difficult to tell apart. When you’re young enough, toxicity has a way of disguising itself as chemistry.

Memory has the unfair advantage of knowing what happened next. Years later, your brain supplies the footnotes.

Nostalgia, meanwhile, is an excellent publicist. Pleasure and anxiety can occupy the same room.