My Own Magic by Anna Kloots

Author:Anna Kloots [Kloots, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Unhappy at the Happiest Place on Earth

Disney World

January 2018

If Disney World had its own government, Mickey and Minnie would obviously be the heads of state, and being unhappy there would be an official crime. Punishment would be swift and harsh: hasty removal from the park, stripped of all souvenirs, and banned from reentry for the fireworks show. You don’t see unhappy people at Disney; everyone is smiling mouse ear to mouse ear as they indulge in Dole Whips, and go Soarin’ Around the World, and meet the real Elsa. The park is designed to bring joy to your every sense: you see magic, you smell sugar, you feel like a kid again, you hear songs you can sing along to, and you taste—well, everything. It was there, at the happiest place on Earth, that I could no longer deny how deeply sad I was.

Ace always spent the first two weeks of each year in Florida to visit his extended family, and I’d gone with him every year since we began dating. I learned on the first trip that he had a Florida routine already in place and my presence wasn’t going to change it. So each day I joined him for his late morning workout, lunch at Panera, an afternoon by the pool, then an early-bird dinner with his family and a nightly trip to the movie theatre. I did this with a smile for years—despite preferring an early morning workout and the beach to the pool, disliking nearly everything at Panera, and reaching a point of wanting to do anything other than watch more movies.

There were only two parts of his daily program that I wholeheartedly loved. One was the evenings spent at his aunt’s condo. I always enjoyed her vast collection of crude needlepoint pillows, freezer filled with ice cream, and the chance to be among family. The other was the side trip to Disney World. Ace was the only person I knew whose love for Disney rivaled my own. Anytime a Disney park was in proximity, he wanted to go, regardless of how recently we’d visited. By 2018, we had been so many times I lost count. We’d gone to Disney not only in Anaheim and Orlando but in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong. We’d taken the nine-hour underground tour, and even swindled our way into the exclusive Club 33. So as our annual Florida trip began, I dared suggest it might be nice to use the Disney budget to go somewhere else that year. But the World of Avatar had just opened, and he had been talking about it for months, eagerly anticipating how amazing the big attraction would be. There was no chance he was not going.

I was a mess inside that January. I felt that my marriage was slipping away, that my husband had lost interest, and that I had lost my sense of self. I also knew we’d be spending most of the next six weeks apart. He was going to the convention in England, and then had to be in LA for work.

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