My love-hate relationship with Miami is no secret. Having been born and raised here, having never lived anywhere else, makes it so that Miami and I have too much history. And I suppose that as it is with any long term relationship, much of it is good, and a lot of it is bad.

There have been periods in my life where I have hated Miami, hated the people here, the way of life here - the closemindedness; the b.s.; the rudeness; the lack of compassion; the haughty, self-indulgent, self-important attitude so many people here seem to have. I have hated the extreme importance placed here on status and status symbols; the way it seems like the laziest, most manipulative, most incompetent people rise to the top and control the fate of the community, in all sectors; I have hated so much about Miami.

And you know, I still hate all those things.

But I love Miami, too, love it intensely. Home is home, as family is family, and to really love and live with something, you accept it, flaws and all, and make it work somehow. I decided a while back that if I was to remain in Miami for the foreseeable future (a choice made for reasons I both can and cannot control), then I had to get over it and make the best of it. If this was to be where I lived my life, then I could make it as good or as miserable as I wanted to.

I decided to aim for "good."

To that end, I am always looking for ways to see Miami with new eyes. That may mean discovering a new restaurant, trying a new activity, exploring some place I hadn't previously been to. Sometimes, it is just me, my own attitude - and I find that with a different, better attitude, something old, or known, looks marvelous again.

It was with this frame of mind that I recently took my own three-hour adventure around Miami. I played tourist for an afternoon, and took the staff of Miami Tour Company up on an offer to try their city tour.

There is much about this tour that I loved, both as a resident and as someone critical of all things touristy. For one, the tour was written by local writers - people with a skill for storytelling who also know the city. This isn't some impersonal, by-the-book narrative about Miami. You can't imagine how much better it is to hear the story of Miami through the interpretation of locals until you try it. There's stuff on this tour that no other tour company will tell you about!

This audio tour uses GPS technology, which is really cool. As the bus (the comfy, not-smelly, clean bus!) approaches each tour spot, the narrator comes on and shares a story. In-between, music plays so you can just sit and relax. It's almost like magic, because you're sitting there, looking around, and just as you're asking yourself, "Wonder what that is?", this soothing voice comes on and tell you. I like tours that can read my mind.

The city tour (and MTC offers other tours - the Everglades, boat tours, Key West and Orlando tours, as well as a few combinations of these) starts in South Beach, makes it way to the mainland - into the Grove, to the Gables, Little Havana and back to the beach. There are your more typical must-sees (none of which I will reveal here), but the tour also takes you to some out-of-the-way spots, which was what I liked the most. I suppose a tourist would want to catch as much of what makes Miami "Miami," but as a local, I loved winding through the Grove and into downtown Coral Gables. There was a span there where I saw a couple of gems and shared some of what I knew with the others (all tourists) on the bus, and I got a total kick out of it. I'm assuming they, too, liked it, since we were all friendly after that.

This adventure was the kind of thing I needed to re-appreciate my hometown. A tourist would find it a good use of time, a way of seeing as much as possible, with the bonus of not having to endure any of the cheesiness of other tours. (Bonus, the tour comes in five languages - English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.) But locals - man, you guys, you will love it, too. Between discovering something new or rediscovering something you'd forgotten about, you'll end up with a renewed appreciation for the Magic City.

I'm already thinking that on the next rainy, nothing-to-do day, I might just haul Max onto that bus and make an afternoon of it. And I'm probably not above taking some friends and doing some funky kind of tour party thing.

Miami, right now, you and I are cool. You are beautiful to me even as I remain aware of your flaws. But I'm glad I did this and came out loving you some more. I needed it. I really did.

La enamorada.

That is what I've always been known as in my family. It is a title I cannot deny; for years, I was indeed la enamorada, one who fell in love madly and intensely - and quickly - only to have the fancy pass within weeks; and only to go through the whole thing all over again weeks or months later. Lather, rinse, repeat.

My hasty, foolish ways made for many jokes among family; it got so that I grew hesitant to mention any new boy I was interested in because I knew no one would believe that I really meant it that time. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I didn't really mean it any of those times; what I was in love with was love itself, and with all the crazy, romantic notions in my head. I was yearning for something - affection, love, acceptance - that I felt I lacked in my life. I blame my overactive imagination. I blame my insecurities. I blame Sweet Valley High and V.C. Andrews.

The problem with being an enamorada is that you repeatedly open yourself to a level of disappointment and heartache too intense for anyone's good. Too intense for my own good, anyway.

I don't want to revisit my entire sordid enamorada history here. The important part right now is that this enamorada, she is still inside me. And I fear her.

There is a moment - on a pretty regular basis, it seems - where I feel her creeping up, pushing my common sense aside, because something - a thought, a conversation, feelings - has excited her and made her feel like she is on the cusp of something great. The moment may be fleeting, but it's enough to alarm me.

Whether it is the right or wrong thing, normal or not, I feel like this part of me can't be trusted and must be stopped. I am engaged in a war; I have to fight her and smack her around some and push her into some place deep enough inside me where she can't mess with my brain or my heart.

The enamorada doesn't quite get that I can no longer free fall, that I can't afford to be heedless, that I just can't approach things (or people) with that sense of "I'm so in looovveee! Wwhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!" or, "This is so friggin' AWESOME!!!!!!!!!" I don't see how that could possibly be good for me, or more importantly, for Max.

Living through this marriage-falling-apart thing has made me cautious in a way I never expected to be. I am more protective of Max, of the choices I make and the ways I behave that could destabilize him. But I am also more protective of myself. This heart of mine that I used to give so freely, that I would sometimes force into people's hands and pretty much beg them to take care of - it's closed now. Not forever, not in some dramatic, I'm-a-broken-sparrow kind of way; it's just not readily available anymore.

I can't imagine that I would be able to dive into anything (and "anything" can be a relationship or just something new and different) like I used to; I can't imagine that I could achieve the level of trust required to let someone in to all these places inside me that I would love to share but am terrified of having destroyed or rejected.

Knowing this, I understand that for possibly the first time ever, no matter how much I might want to give, I won't be able to, and I won't want to. For possibly the first time ever, he who may want to be with me will have to bust his ass to prove himself worthy of me, my time, my love. The push-back I've always been afraid to give for fear the other would just walk away - I'm no longer afraid. I am no longer a hungry, scared child.

But that stubborn enamorada in me, she remains. She is the other side of the coin, the one who retains a tiny bit of hunger; the one who believes in wild, romantic stupidities that don't really happen or work in real life, but she refuses to accept that; the one who falls, easily, readily, with stars in her eyes and hope in her stomach; the one who wants something real and deep and warm and loving and wonderful and - cue the chirping birds and the happy ending.

She is me at my most passionate, my most intense, my most fearless. She matters to me because it is she who keeps me going when things are at their bleakest. But she has betrayed me too many times, opened the doors to levels of pain and self-doubt that sometimes feel like too much to bear. She has caused me a lot of harm.

So until I can find the right balance between la enamorada and my more pragmatic side, she is on lock-down. Because the falling, it is wonderful and thrilling and sweet - but only when you don't crash and burn.