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Paradise is always a distant dream and so it was. I have just spent five days on vacation. Now I'm home and I've never yearned for escape more than I am now.

Home sucks. I know this of course, and yet usually vacation tires me so much that I'm glad to be back and practically want to make out with the signs. Usually, I cannot stand to be a stranger in a strange land. But that is not now.

The Keys is a great selection of sites. So is the hotel we stayed at. The vacation was simple yet not too simple. We relaxed half the time and toured the other half. We ate food that was out of this world and savored it. We laughed so hard our sides almost burst; we were a family. We felt more at ease than we did in a long time. Best of all, school and schoolwork were distant dreams. But alas that is no more. I had achieved respite from a world that put chains around me but now that very world is yanking me back.

So it appears I am back to reality. I have to eat food that is quite average; I have to go to school tomorrow; I have to deal with earthly concerns again. The cold wind outside alone is a slap in the face. I'm avoiding the scale because the number there would be another.

It appears there are no palm trees around here. No beautiful turquoise seas. Not nearly as many restaurants. Boring cookie cutter homes. Not one trace of Spanish in the air or lilting Cuban accent. Reality is clearer now than it's ever been before. I'll have to do my math homework soon enough because I missed a day of school; I have no idea if I have missed other homework but I guess I can care about that later (I don't want to accept all of reality yet and it would be so much for me).

I miss my dog and my hamster. That's the one positive of being home. But that's about it. I'm yearning for the Keys again as if they are my home. I feel like it's been a vacation cut short, as if there was so much still that I could have done and yet didn't.

I'm sure school will be even harder to adjust to than it usually is and that will suck. But I don't want to think about that or the thought will drown me again.

Home sweet home never seemed so bitter before. Is there another flight to Miami?