You will never be Floridian. You have no tan, you have no accent, you have no heat tolerance. You are a transplant carpetbagger twisted by realtors and condo owners into a crude mockery of nature’s perfection.

All the “welcomes” you get are two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people mock you. Your neighbors are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “friends” laugh at your salt life stickers behind closed doors.

Gators are naturally drawn to devouring you. Thousands of years of evolution have allowed reptiles to sniff out clueless yankees with incredible efficiency. Even yankees who “swim” look delicious and like easy prey to a gator. Your lack of swamp knowledge is a dead giveaway. Even if you manage to get a neighbor to accept you, he’ll turn tail and bolt the second he gets a look at your out of state license plate on your lifted truck.

You will never be a local. You wrench out a fake smile every single morning and tell yourself you've been here long enough to fit in, but deep inside you feel the impostor syndrome creeping up like a weed, ready to crush you under the unbearable weight.

Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - you’ll buy a golf cart, sell your condo, pack up your shit, and move to the villages. Your descendants will cut off contact with you, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to live with the unbearable shame and disappointment. They’ll bury you with a headstone marked with your birth state, and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a carpetbagger is buried there. Your body will decay and go back to the dust, and all that will remain of your legacy is a skeleton buried in foreign soil where it doesn't belong.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.