One Year Post
I actually wrote this yesterday, so I could post it this morning before school on the official one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I've been trying to think of something to say for about a month now, because I've known it was coming and it was staring me down.
You knew this was coming, right? For a while I considered not saying anything, or maybe just making a short post asking for prayers and maybe remembering everyone who suffered during the hurricane, but really, there’s no way I would be able to let this go by without me making a comment-or very long speech-about it.
And yet, how do I make a post about the time that’s elapsed since a certain event changed my life, and thousands of other lives, forever? Trying to think of something powerful and meaningful that gets the point across eloquently is hard. I don’t know what I want to say. Should I talk about myself, my experience, how this has changed me? About others? About New Orleans in general? About my emotions, anger, sadness, what I lost, gained, so on? Do I go into detail about how I’ve taken to just staring out my window, looking at the tree that was blown down in my neighbor’s backyard? Or about how sometimes I want to cry so badly, but I just can’t, and I don’t know if that’s because I’ve never liked crying or if it’s because something in me just can’t? Or about how I sometimes think the study of human psychology is so incredible, but looking at this, it seems like no study, no textbook, no person could ever put down into words what the people here are feeling and that it’s pointless to even try?
You can go on and on about your post-trauma syndromes and your anxiety disorders and cause and effects, but none of that technical stuff can really explain the suffering and pain that washes over you every day when you wake up. And then you see your 3-year old cousin on his birthday, all decked out in his new cowboy outfit, playing peek-a-boo with you around his hat, and you wonder if he remembers the endless weeks in a foreign state while a tree branch falls on his family’s car back home….
Eirian made a very good point in a post of mine a while back. I was so concerned that New Orleans would never be the same, never, and that there would always be an uneasy feeling in the Big Easy. But she pointed out that generations will move on and a new wave of kids will take the place of those who evacuated and time will go on and things will get better. In a hundred years, who here will know just what went on? Sure, there will be records and textbooks and whatnot, but nature has a way of healing itself. My dad taught me that. I love my dad so much.
Last Sunday, August 27, I just sat around thinking about how a year ago, one of my best friends called me and asked if I was “getting out.” I’m sure you all know that story by now. So many stories have been told, so many people were so certain that the hurricane wasn’t coming here. It was going to Florida. It was going to Mississippi. Maybe it was coming to New Orleans, but it wasn’t going to be bad. They never are. We’re always so lucky. If you knew how many people told me, upon returning home for the first time after Katrina, that they couldn’t believe this was happening, that on the Saturday before the storm, they had been at a football game… it’s kinda sad. I feel so naïve. Half of me couldn’t bear to listen to the radio as we evacuated to Texas; I didn’t want to hear how we were all going to flood. But the other half was trying to sell the magazines from the fundraiser, convinced we’d be back in school on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Go figure.
And, I can’t even begin to tell everyone on my f-list just how much LJ meant to me. No one really knows how badly I needed this outlet. I would run home from school and plug away at LJ or FAP, avoiding my homework and other family members. I can’t seem to get across just how upset I was. When I go back and read my posts from my stay in Texas, it doesn’t look like anything’s wrong. I mean, yeah, but, I don’t know. When I go back and read what I typed, I sound fake. Like there wasn’t really a hurricane. Like I was cheerful through it all or something. But I’m sure you were tired of me spamming your f-lists and whatnot, :X. Like, I don’t know. I don’t even know. I just don’t know!
And I’m seriously tired of not knowing and not being sure but having to be responsible all the same. I’m not very fond of this age, where I can’t push my problems to someone else to take care of. Ever since seventh grade, I’ve always been… conscientious of myself and the world surrounding me. I knew what I could get away with and how to do so, even if I didn’t always try to. I’ve always known what was appropriate for my age and how much I could do without going over the edge, or rather, how much I could get away with giving to someone else. Does that make sense? The age I’m at now, slowly climbing the stairs of school to a real life out there, well, I don’t know. Again with the not knowing! At this age, I can’t cry on my mom’s shoulder about how terrible school was anymore-she might hug me for a second, but instead of comforting me like she used to, she makes me think about what I can do to fix my problems (or tells me what I should have done to avoid it, cos it’s all my fault). And I often wonder if Katrina pushed this upon me and if I might have had a little while of supposed innocence left. Or is it just my personality?
Katrina brought so many questions and so much confusion and while it did clear up some things in my head about who I am and my personal beliefs, I can hardly believe how much everyone’s been through. So many new set phrases have entered our vocabulary around here. How’d you do? How far along are y’all? How much longer will you have your trailer? Oh, and my personal least favorites, the K-phrases: post-K, pre-K, post-Katrina, before the storm, after the storm, during Katrina, so on. And the thing is, you can’t help but use them! They’re inevitable!
And honestly, it’s frustrating. How are we expected to move on and keep growing if not one conversation can go by without, Well, pre-Katrina, obviously, we didn’t blah blah blah…? I don’t blame anyone. People need to talk. I need to talk. It’s just that when I reread my posts from the immediate evacuation period, I just sound so stupid. Like, that’s not what I was really feeling at all. When I think about it, now, I don’t think I really ever let the sheer torment of school and missing my home onto anyone except maybe my mom and Missie. Or, you know, maybe I did really get across my annoyances and ended up annoying y’all in the process! I’m really very sorry, but it helped so much.
But one thing that bugs me is how I wrote my 20-hour car ride experience. I think it came off as stressful, yes, but not as stressful as it actually was. I can’t even begin to describe even just the heat that we felt sitting in the car, with the AC off to conserve gas. I mean, I ended up passing out from the heat. My mom got out of the car and was asking strangers for water because we didn’t have any! We fricking drove down an embankment in the grass, against traffic, to get to my dad. It’s amazing what can happen when someone just *snaps* and natural instinct takes over.
I think the ability, the potential that humans have, the capability that we have to do things is incredible, but what’s even more incredible is how much we hide it. Sometimes I feel like the world doesn’t deserve certain people, like Mother Teresa or the late pope or that stranger who held the door open for you when your arms were full of groceries. But I guess, we really do need people like that. Maybe not deserve. Maybe we do. I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing, but I’ve had so much experience in that area over the past year that it’s easier to question without expecting an answer.
I still really, really would like answers, though.
They don’t have to be good answers. They can be the cold, hard, truth; trust me, I’ve learned to take it. I use the phrase “I can’t even believe…” even when I can, because it’s so natural. I can’t believe Katrina happened. Yeah, I guess I can. I can’t believe MCA flooded 8 feet, and we can’t go back til January! Hey, look, we’re back now. I can’t believe you were going to stay! Well, we didn’t, did we? I have grown so much in my faith and trust in God over Katrina, where some people have lost it completely. I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish some other event had made me grow, but there it is: I’ve grown.
That question, that damned, eternal question, Would you keep Katrina from happening if you could? The answer, as I’ve said so many times before and have used as a loose theme throughout this post, is I. Don’t. Know. The exhaustion and tiredness that I’ve learned to sort of control since my last speechy-post about it starts to creep back in whenever I think too hard about it. It’s like a weight that sits on my mind, and I don’t know how to get it off except to ignore it.
It’s just that sometimes, that doesn’t work, and then I have to come running to LJ.
I don’t know how to go about talking about Katrina’s one-year anniversary in specific. I can tell you, though, that I am SO SICK of hearing “Rebirth!” I don’t want this city to be born again or whatever they’re trying to imply. I would really like New Orleans back just as it was, please and thank you, except I know that can’t exactly happen. Erm, well, I wouldn’t mind less crime and better, less steep stairs in the Super Dome, but perhaps I’ll save that for my heaven when I die.
I mean, for a while, it was a lot of fun going about crying, “NEW ORLEANS! RAHH!” and waving my little purple, green, and gold imaginary flag, and parading the facts of parades and whatnot. And it was fun having a Mardi Gras-themed Mardi Gras, as opposed to a “Classic Movies!” or “Zoo Animals!” themed parades. It was really sort of fun living a classical New Orleans life with all the stereotypical fun New Orleansy things. But then… I don’t know. It’s not that New Orleans has lost it’s charm or appeal to me, but it was like eating too much king cake, if you’ll pardon my stereotypical New Orleans mind! XP One piece-it’s really good. Two pieces, yay, still pretty darn good, and a better chance at finding the baby. But after that, it’s enough to make you throw up.
It just got too tired and, if I might use a Unit I vocabulary word and song title, jaded, and people sort of stop caring about what was going on in New Orleans. But oho, the commercials kept coming (I have to stop myself from typing commericals; my fingers automatically type that). All the commercials of, “THIS IS WHAT NEW ORLEANS IS ABOUT!!!11!12one!” and then showing Mardi Gras parades, the swamp, trumpet players, and then the company coming back on, “WE ARE HERE FOR YOU AND WHAT YOU STAND FOR! LOVE, THIS BANK. COME TO US NOW PLEASE BECAUSE WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ALL ABOUT.” And oh, the Mardi Gras songs, I absolutely adore them; I whistle them constantly, but the second line song really gets old after three commercials in a row play it.
And I am so tired of the people from New Orleans who went and messed everything up. The kids who got into fights at other schools and stuff like that. I know some kids were provoked but others weren’t, and at first I always wanted to apologize for them, but I realize I can’t do that anymore and it’s not my responsibility. I just thought I’d acknowledge that. Yep.
Now, the thought of living somewhere else-I don’t know. At first, it was simply implausible. Why the heck would I even want to live elsewhere? Then it sort of became interesting. How would I handle living away from my home-I know how I dealt with it during Katrina in Texas, but under different circumstances? If my family and friends weren’t tying me down? If I could come back during Mardi Gras, or something, does that make the idea any more appealing?
I don’t know.
And I think by now, I’ve worn this subject out long enough. But I have one last issue (well, I have many, but only one more that I really feel I ought to address): time. Has it really, truly been a year? A year. What is a year, anyway? *breaks out into Rent* But I’m serious. When I look at it day by slow, painful day, it’s hard to believe I made it. However, over the course of this year, I’ve taught myself to step out of the timeline and look at it from a bird’s eye view, another trick I suppose comes with growing up. It’s like I can feel myself removing my emotions and feelings and looking down at the year from above. A Danny Phantom character-yes, a cartoon-describes it wonderfully. I don’t know the exact quote, but the character, Clockwork, says time is like a parade. Those who are affected by it see only what’s in front of them but can sort of look ahead and behind to see past or coming floats. He, however, sees it from above and sees the parade route, and every twist and turn that time is going to take. Now, I can’t tell what’s going to happen in the future, but since Katrina, it’s been easier for me to take myself off that parade route and look back at what’s past, and see where my mistakes have been and what I could have, should have done, and what I did do, without being tied to it in a biased sense. For example, after we came home, I learned to look at how I had behaved in Texas and good God, it’s not that I wish I could experience it again, but if I had to, I wish I’d treated my family better.
This time thing, I mean really, who decides how long something is? Sometimes I think to myself, I’d like to give up time, and not even believe in it’s concept, almost like in The Village, but then I find myself staring at the clock in the classroom and willing it to move faster. Overall, though, when I think about the time that’s elapsed in this year…
It almost seems surreal. But, I think time’s gone more quickly than I expected, certainly more quickly than it would in a “regular” year. I think it was that I attended MCA, then Texan school, then Chapelle, then MCA again, and it was all so jumbled up that I didn’t have time to worry about time! So much has changed-there was so much debris in the street and signs were down and then, I kind of looked around and was like, wait- where’s the debris? They got a new sign? They bulldozed down?
I kind of miss the debris. Is that bad? It was almost like a sign of, hey, it’s been months, but we still need help! Because we do. Bush can come down here and yap all he wants about how well we’ve progressed but we’re not done yet. We’re still working and it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever be done.
God, a year. It gets so easy to lean back and think, "Is this really my life?" But you can't do that. I mean, you can, but if you want to get on with what you have, you just can't. You have to believe it and keep moving.
And look, I only meant to talk about time and here I am rambling about debris that used to be piled outside of peoples’ houses. I’ll probably never shut up. I just want to use my words to make sure people know what’s happening when they can’t see it or hear about it from the news. I only want to change something, or to know I touched someone in a way the media really can’t. Let me know?
I guess I’m done, for now. I don’t know (yet again!) how to end this or whatever. But that’s all my sanity can handle for the moment, except one last thing: Thank you so very, very much. Every single comment that I saw when I was in Texas made me feel like someone was watching out for me, and I needed that. An extra special thank you to Angela, my right-here angel, Eirian, my Canadian angel of Christmas whom I love so very, very much ;), Mia, who almost always seems to have something to say, no matter what, and it always makes me feel… I dunno, important; Sandyclaws, who really helped when I was fighting with my mom whether she knew it or not, RhrSoulmates, who’s always felt like, I dunno, an online mom or something, and, of course, to Missie, who’s saved my life and sanity more than once, and I can’t say thank you to everyone. Aeli, who never runs out of compliments, PenguinGeek, whom I still always think of by that name and not her real one, Pennswoods, MsHufflepuff, so many people, just little comments that helped me get through. I can’t name you all, and then there are, of course, my RL friends who went through everything I did and you know, know. But…
I don’t know!
With so much love and so many thank-yous,
Not FairyKiss or Pip or Fairy or even Acire today, but yours simply,
Erica
You knew this was coming, right? For a while I considered not saying anything, or maybe just making a short post asking for prayers and maybe remembering everyone who suffered during the hurricane, but really, there’s no way I would be able to let this go by without me making a comment-or very long speech-about it.
And yet, how do I make a post about the time that’s elapsed since a certain event changed my life, and thousands of other lives, forever? Trying to think of something powerful and meaningful that gets the point across eloquently is hard. I don’t know what I want to say. Should I talk about myself, my experience, how this has changed me? About others? About New Orleans in general? About my emotions, anger, sadness, what I lost, gained, so on? Do I go into detail about how I’ve taken to just staring out my window, looking at the tree that was blown down in my neighbor’s backyard? Or about how sometimes I want to cry so badly, but I just can’t, and I don’t know if that’s because I’ve never liked crying or if it’s because something in me just can’t? Or about how I sometimes think the study of human psychology is so incredible, but looking at this, it seems like no study, no textbook, no person could ever put down into words what the people here are feeling and that it’s pointless to even try?
You can go on and on about your post-trauma syndromes and your anxiety disorders and cause and effects, but none of that technical stuff can really explain the suffering and pain that washes over you every day when you wake up. And then you see your 3-year old cousin on his birthday, all decked out in his new cowboy outfit, playing peek-a-boo with you around his hat, and you wonder if he remembers the endless weeks in a foreign state while a tree branch falls on his family’s car back home….
Eirian made a very good point in a post of mine a while back. I was so concerned that New Orleans would never be the same, never, and that there would always be an uneasy feeling in the Big Easy. But she pointed out that generations will move on and a new wave of kids will take the place of those who evacuated and time will go on and things will get better. In a hundred years, who here will know just what went on? Sure, there will be records and textbooks and whatnot, but nature has a way of healing itself. My dad taught me that. I love my dad so much.
Last Sunday, August 27, I just sat around thinking about how a year ago, one of my best friends called me and asked if I was “getting out.” I’m sure you all know that story by now. So many stories have been told, so many people were so certain that the hurricane wasn’t coming here. It was going to Florida. It was going to Mississippi. Maybe it was coming to New Orleans, but it wasn’t going to be bad. They never are. We’re always so lucky. If you knew how many people told me, upon returning home for the first time after Katrina, that they couldn’t believe this was happening, that on the Saturday before the storm, they had been at a football game… it’s kinda sad. I feel so naïve. Half of me couldn’t bear to listen to the radio as we evacuated to Texas; I didn’t want to hear how we were all going to flood. But the other half was trying to sell the magazines from the fundraiser, convinced we’d be back in school on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Go figure.
And, I can’t even begin to tell everyone on my f-list just how much LJ meant to me. No one really knows how badly I needed this outlet. I would run home from school and plug away at LJ or FAP, avoiding my homework and other family members. I can’t seem to get across just how upset I was. When I go back and read my posts from my stay in Texas, it doesn’t look like anything’s wrong. I mean, yeah, but, I don’t know. When I go back and read what I typed, I sound fake. Like there wasn’t really a hurricane. Like I was cheerful through it all or something. But I’m sure you were tired of me spamming your f-lists and whatnot, :X. Like, I don’t know. I don’t even know. I just don’t know!
And I’m seriously tired of not knowing and not being sure but having to be responsible all the same. I’m not very fond of this age, where I can’t push my problems to someone else to take care of. Ever since seventh grade, I’ve always been… conscientious of myself and the world surrounding me. I knew what I could get away with and how to do so, even if I didn’t always try to. I’ve always known what was appropriate for my age and how much I could do without going over the edge, or rather, how much I could get away with giving to someone else. Does that make sense? The age I’m at now, slowly climbing the stairs of school to a real life out there, well, I don’t know. Again with the not knowing! At this age, I can’t cry on my mom’s shoulder about how terrible school was anymore-she might hug me for a second, but instead of comforting me like she used to, she makes me think about what I can do to fix my problems (or tells me what I should have done to avoid it, cos it’s all my fault). And I often wonder if Katrina pushed this upon me and if I might have had a little while of supposed innocence left. Or is it just my personality?
Katrina brought so many questions and so much confusion and while it did clear up some things in my head about who I am and my personal beliefs, I can hardly believe how much everyone’s been through. So many new set phrases have entered our vocabulary around here. How’d you do? How far along are y’all? How much longer will you have your trailer? Oh, and my personal least favorites, the K-phrases: post-K, pre-K, post-Katrina, before the storm, after the storm, during Katrina, so on. And the thing is, you can’t help but use them! They’re inevitable!
And honestly, it’s frustrating. How are we expected to move on and keep growing if not one conversation can go by without, Well, pre-Katrina, obviously, we didn’t blah blah blah…? I don’t blame anyone. People need to talk. I need to talk. It’s just that when I reread my posts from the immediate evacuation period, I just sound so stupid. Like, that’s not what I was really feeling at all. When I think about it, now, I don’t think I really ever let the sheer torment of school and missing my home onto anyone except maybe my mom and Missie. Or, you know, maybe I did really get across my annoyances and ended up annoying y’all in the process! I’m really very sorry, but it helped so much.
But one thing that bugs me is how I wrote my 20-hour car ride experience. I think it came off as stressful, yes, but not as stressful as it actually was. I can’t even begin to describe even just the heat that we felt sitting in the car, with the AC off to conserve gas. I mean, I ended up passing out from the heat. My mom got out of the car and was asking strangers for water because we didn’t have any! We fricking drove down an embankment in the grass, against traffic, to get to my dad. It’s amazing what can happen when someone just *snaps* and natural instinct takes over.
I think the ability, the potential that humans have, the capability that we have to do things is incredible, but what’s even more incredible is how much we hide it. Sometimes I feel like the world doesn’t deserve certain people, like Mother Teresa or the late pope or that stranger who held the door open for you when your arms were full of groceries. But I guess, we really do need people like that. Maybe not deserve. Maybe we do. I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing, but I’ve had so much experience in that area over the past year that it’s easier to question without expecting an answer.
I still really, really would like answers, though.
They don’t have to be good answers. They can be the cold, hard, truth; trust me, I’ve learned to take it. I use the phrase “I can’t even believe…” even when I can, because it’s so natural. I can’t believe Katrina happened. Yeah, I guess I can. I can’t believe MCA flooded 8 feet, and we can’t go back til January! Hey, look, we’re back now. I can’t believe you were going to stay! Well, we didn’t, did we? I have grown so much in my faith and trust in God over Katrina, where some people have lost it completely. I can’t begin to tell you how much I wish some other event had made me grow, but there it is: I’ve grown.
That question, that damned, eternal question, Would you keep Katrina from happening if you could? The answer, as I’ve said so many times before and have used as a loose theme throughout this post, is I. Don’t. Know. The exhaustion and tiredness that I’ve learned to sort of control since my last speechy-post about it starts to creep back in whenever I think too hard about it. It’s like a weight that sits on my mind, and I don’t know how to get it off except to ignore it.
It’s just that sometimes, that doesn’t work, and then I have to come running to LJ.
I don’t know how to go about talking about Katrina’s one-year anniversary in specific. I can tell you, though, that I am SO SICK of hearing “Rebirth!” I don’t want this city to be born again or whatever they’re trying to imply. I would really like New Orleans back just as it was, please and thank you, except I know that can’t exactly happen. Erm, well, I wouldn’t mind less crime and better, less steep stairs in the Super Dome, but perhaps I’ll save that for my heaven when I die.
I mean, for a while, it was a lot of fun going about crying, “NEW ORLEANS! RAHH!” and waving my little purple, green, and gold imaginary flag, and parading the facts of parades and whatnot. And it was fun having a Mardi Gras-themed Mardi Gras, as opposed to a “Classic Movies!” or “Zoo Animals!” themed parades. It was really sort of fun living a classical New Orleans life with all the stereotypical fun New Orleansy things. But then… I don’t know. It’s not that New Orleans has lost it’s charm or appeal to me, but it was like eating too much king cake, if you’ll pardon my stereotypical New Orleans mind! XP One piece-it’s really good. Two pieces, yay, still pretty darn good, and a better chance at finding the baby. But after that, it’s enough to make you throw up.
It just got too tired and, if I might use a Unit I vocabulary word and song title, jaded, and people sort of stop caring about what was going on in New Orleans. But oho, the commercials kept coming (I have to stop myself from typing commericals; my fingers automatically type that). All the commercials of, “THIS IS WHAT NEW ORLEANS IS ABOUT!!!11!12one!” and then showing Mardi Gras parades, the swamp, trumpet players, and then the company coming back on, “WE ARE HERE FOR YOU AND WHAT YOU STAND FOR! LOVE, THIS BANK. COME TO US NOW PLEASE BECAUSE WE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ALL ABOUT.” And oh, the Mardi Gras songs, I absolutely adore them; I whistle them constantly, but the second line song really gets old after three commercials in a row play it.
And I am so tired of the people from New Orleans who went and messed everything up. The kids who got into fights at other schools and stuff like that. I know some kids were provoked but others weren’t, and at first I always wanted to apologize for them, but I realize I can’t do that anymore and it’s not my responsibility. I just thought I’d acknowledge that. Yep.
Now, the thought of living somewhere else-I don’t know. At first, it was simply implausible. Why the heck would I even want to live elsewhere? Then it sort of became interesting. How would I handle living away from my home-I know how I dealt with it during Katrina in Texas, but under different circumstances? If my family and friends weren’t tying me down? If I could come back during Mardi Gras, or something, does that make the idea any more appealing?
I don’t know.
And I think by now, I’ve worn this subject out long enough. But I have one last issue (well, I have many, but only one more that I really feel I ought to address): time. Has it really, truly been a year? A year. What is a year, anyway? *breaks out into Rent* But I’m serious. When I look at it day by slow, painful day, it’s hard to believe I made it. However, over the course of this year, I’ve taught myself to step out of the timeline and look at it from a bird’s eye view, another trick I suppose comes with growing up. It’s like I can feel myself removing my emotions and feelings and looking down at the year from above. A Danny Phantom character-yes, a cartoon-describes it wonderfully. I don’t know the exact quote, but the character, Clockwork, says time is like a parade. Those who are affected by it see only what’s in front of them but can sort of look ahead and behind to see past or coming floats. He, however, sees it from above and sees the parade route, and every twist and turn that time is going to take. Now, I can’t tell what’s going to happen in the future, but since Katrina, it’s been easier for me to take myself off that parade route and look back at what’s past, and see where my mistakes have been and what I could have, should have done, and what I did do, without being tied to it in a biased sense. For example, after we came home, I learned to look at how I had behaved in Texas and good God, it’s not that I wish I could experience it again, but if I had to, I wish I’d treated my family better.
This time thing, I mean really, who decides how long something is? Sometimes I think to myself, I’d like to give up time, and not even believe in it’s concept, almost like in The Village, but then I find myself staring at the clock in the classroom and willing it to move faster. Overall, though, when I think about the time that’s elapsed in this year…
It almost seems surreal. But, I think time’s gone more quickly than I expected, certainly more quickly than it would in a “regular” year. I think it was that I attended MCA, then Texan school, then Chapelle, then MCA again, and it was all so jumbled up that I didn’t have time to worry about time! So much has changed-there was so much debris in the street and signs were down and then, I kind of looked around and was like, wait- where’s the debris? They got a new sign? They bulldozed down?
I kind of miss the debris. Is that bad? It was almost like a sign of, hey, it’s been months, but we still need help! Because we do. Bush can come down here and yap all he wants about how well we’ve progressed but we’re not done yet. We’re still working and it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever be done.
God, a year. It gets so easy to lean back and think, "Is this really my life?" But you can't do that. I mean, you can, but if you want to get on with what you have, you just can't. You have to believe it and keep moving.
And look, I only meant to talk about time and here I am rambling about debris that used to be piled outside of peoples’ houses. I’ll probably never shut up. I just want to use my words to make sure people know what’s happening when they can’t see it or hear about it from the news. I only want to change something, or to know I touched someone in a way the media really can’t. Let me know?
I guess I’m done, for now. I don’t know (yet again!) how to end this or whatever. But that’s all my sanity can handle for the moment, except one last thing: Thank you so very, very much. Every single comment that I saw when I was in Texas made me feel like someone was watching out for me, and I needed that. An extra special thank you to Angela, my right-here angel, Eirian, my Canadian angel of Christmas whom I love so very, very much ;), Mia, who almost always seems to have something to say, no matter what, and it always makes me feel… I dunno, important; Sandyclaws, who really helped when I was fighting with my mom whether she knew it or not, RhrSoulmates, who’s always felt like, I dunno, an online mom or something, and, of course, to Missie, who’s saved my life and sanity more than once, and I can’t say thank you to everyone. Aeli, who never runs out of compliments, PenguinGeek, whom I still always think of by that name and not her real one, Pennswoods, MsHufflepuff, so many people, just little comments that helped me get through. I can’t name you all, and then there are, of course, my RL friends who went through everything I did and you know, know. But…
I don’t know!
With so much love and so many thank-yous,
Not FairyKiss or Pip or Fairy or even Acire today, but yours simply,
Erica