Pandemonium’s Problem
Surviving with destruction
Fighting Through It All
Emoting is not something I do well or I prefer to do. I have someone that we have agreed to end with our relationship, yet, I can’t move out until a month from now. If I didn’t get and solidify that apartment earlier, before this Hurricane, I’d be like a lot of people floating right now.
He and I get along like a well oiled machine. He’s even telling people of how we’re separating, just announcing it to the world, he figures why the hell not?
There’s not any ill feelings between us, only a love lasting love we’ve had for years which isn’t enough. We both agree we need more than what is provided within our relationship. But going through this event made me realize how much I depend upon him. And how deeply I’ll miss it when we do finally separate. But, we agree that this is for the best of us. He and I are doing everything we can to help the other get through this horrible event.
We were talking about relationships with a drive to IKEA to replace things. There was an event I went through where I totally lost my shit. I’ve been doing that a lot lately and can’t quite keep it together that well. And, so he came to my defense.
“You don’t mess with people I care about. Ever.”
He ended up saying as he ranted and raved. This man is that type to kid around even when a fire broke out. The house is going down in flames and he’ll be kidding that at least we don’t have to clean it. Our light hearted jokes have been few and far between as we go through the different levels of Dante’s Hell with this experience.
The Unwavering Jokesters
Throughout this whole thing he’s kept it together way more than me. I know his family looks to him as that unwavering mountain that they can always rely on. Dear lord, I do it too.
A smile appeared on my face as I looked at him.
“Awww, so you care about me, huh?”
I say jokingly, with a kidding edge. He shrugs his shoulders with a verbal pishaw. I can hear a kidding back “nah” said and we go back to work replacing, removing, scrounging around our destroyed home.
He’s lost sentimental things he can never replace. Things from his grandparents, heirlooms passed down from generation to generation. We’re both book worms and he lost a substantial amount that can’t be replaced. I see him sitting on a Hope chest his family has had for generations looking stricken.
“I just lost my grandfather’s Bible.”
He loved his grandfathers, and he’s a huge family person. I am too but my situation is complicated as my family argues logistics of this Hurricane with me. And why I’m not vacating and abandoning this city as my home. There’s so much water that was dumped here that the Weather Channel created new levels of rain fall.
“I’m so sorry.”
It’s a broken record skipping on repeat as we find things we can’t possibly ever recover or replace. The furniture is given away to this Hurricane willingly. Take this shit away, it is destroyed.
We just gave over the keys to our obliterated home, our apartment, yesterday. Whatever is in there that wasn’t garbage is now. The complex has hired a crew to dissemble and throw away all of the destroyed things from every first level apartment.
What You Can Never Recover
The colors and ink from one of my photos bleeds off from a photo album. I get it upstairs and absolutely panic because these pictures are precious. I’m actually smiling in them and that is fuck all rare.
I have my arms around my brother and father. I stand in the middle with this wide ass, goofy grin. It’s wintertime and a jacket drapes my shoulders and a baseball cap sits on my head.
I went through pictures yesterday that survived this apocalyptic event. There is only one of these photos in existence. It’s my brother and I when I was four and he was eleven years old. We’re out in this sand building minnow farms and pretending we are the villains from this movie we just saw.
There’s the biggest grins ever on our faces, I remember this day so distinctly. The sand in between my fingers that I held and squished as the water seeped out. I thew it out into the lake with a wild scream.
My brother and I had a wet sand fight against each other. It’s like a snow fight but a lot more painful. That day is one of my most precious memories of my entire childhood. It’s one of my most favorite times me and my brother had as children. And that one photo encapsulates all those emotions and more.
“Are you okay?”
People ask me, and honestly I don’t even know what I am right now? I’m better? I keep moving forward because it’s the only way to move. Backward does nothing, and stagnancy I will not live in.
I have to survive this, there’s no other way to be. I won’t face the other ways of being. My body and mind want to just collapse in exhaustion, but that’s not an option.
