Good morning, or evening, depending on how your schedule is set up, Bitchfaces. I’m going to do something I rarely do, and that’s defend the Florida Man.
I know. I can’t believe this shit myself, actually.
So, my homeboy Pynes describes Florida Man as “a mix between real cowboys and dope boys”. He is not wrong. Most of the guys I know are exactly that. They can handle anything Florida agriculture can throw at them, or they can handle a brick in a couple of hours if you give them a burner and a rental car.
That’s just Florida.
I digress.
Pictured above, Ronald Cummings. This is the father of Haleigh Cummings, missing 5-year-old from the panhandle. She’s been missing since 2009.
Let me advise off rip, he isn’t suspected with her disappearance. The sheriff has all but cleared him. However, he is a heroin dealer, and traffics pills as well. You see where this is going right?
He just got out from a 12 year stretch in prison. Christmas Day, he was higher than a fucking kite, nodding out at the wheel with a beer in his lap. When the Sheriff who arrived on scene after Cummings hit a street sign attempted to gain control of the vehicle to start shutting this nodout party down, Cummings grabs the cops service weapon, attempts to pull it from the holster, then knocks his radio out of his hands as he’s calling for backup.
Goddam. Bruh. You can’t do any of that shit. None, this is the makings of a natural life sentence and you’re just riding around with it in the front fucking seat.
Ok, look. I’ve told every one of y’all what happened after my girl passed. I spiraled so fucking fast. Had it not been for my ex-husband and my family, I would still be in prison right now. I have no doubt. They kept me from doing exactly what this man just got arrested for, which includes trafficking in heroin, trafficking in prescriptions he isn’t prescribed, and battery on a LEO, and these are just a few. There’s a fucking slew.
This guy has nobody in his life that is watching his six. My people did everything under the fucking sun to keep this exact shit from happening to me, and for the most part they were pretty successful at it (shout out to my homegirl Beattie, bitch, you had me).
The holidays for someone with trauma like this around their children? Fucking horrible. I couldn’t even imagine not having an answer for the death of a baby. Oh, wait, wrong, yes I can, because I lived that until last year when science finally gave us one, praise Jesus.
Listen, if you have people in your life who have lost babies, don’t do that “my grandad passed 5 years ago” dance with them. Baby, I’ve lost all kind of people, but when my girl left me, I lost my fucking mind. You hear me? Like, it’s not even in the same fucking arena.
So, Florida Man, I get it dude. I do. I have been in that driver’s seat, beer in my lap, nodding out and wishing to God I could just go back to the time before. Just the minutes before so I could take it all back, so I could get it right this time. There are no second chances.
You had the closest thing to a second chance when they let you walk out of the joint. I don’t think you’re gonna get that chance again. And I’m sorry for that, because I know exactly where you were in this scenario. I know how the numb felt. I know how you could stop screaming in your head, finally, just for those 15 or 20 minutes before you remembered that this is actually your life. This is actually your fucked up life.
I truly hope that every other Florida Man like this has better people in their corner. Someone to grab their keys and tell them, “there’s no fucking way you’re leaving here carrying that, doing all that”. People like my people, solid ass people who kept me from being this messy ass looking fool.
People who made sure, no matter how overwhelming the grief could be, that I had a fucking tomorrow to come home to. That’s solid.
I've written 100 things but none of them are right. I know a mere shadow of this pain enough to realise what hell it must be. For what it's worth, I'm with you. ♡
The crazy must always occasionally take the wheel. Crazy is my copilot.