Personal junk about the hurricane under the read more
Where I live, Irma is likely to hit. I don’t know how severely, because news has been wildly switching at a 50/50 rate between category 1 and category 3. If it’s category three, we’re probably fucked. The county directly next to mine has called for evacuation, but since our county has not (not that I expect them to. They’re the last to do anything, if they do it at all.) my parents have decided they don’t want to deal with evacuation traffic to go to Atlanta where it will be safer, and would rather stay here. And they have not really done anything at all to prepare for this? I asked about getting water and my father said my grandmother has some, and since she’s staying with us we’ll take the water she bought to last one person and, I guess, just make it last for six people. I asked about food, and my father said we have plenty of frozen meat, which will rot if (but I’m banking on when) the power goes out. We have no canned food. We have a grill (which my dad would theoretically cook our hopefully-not-rotten-meat on) and, I think, two whole flashlights. Luckily, my mother and I are such candle fanatics that we have plenty of candles, but I much prefer flashlights. Whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers. And I certainly did not choose to stay where I currently am. Plus, all my friends (except possibly one family) will be evacuating, so it’s not like we could call on their actually responsible asses them.
Now, despite my angry rant I just wrote, I actually do want to make the best of this. We went through Hurricane Matthew last year, and we lost power for five days. Not having electricity and trying to ration phone time and losing everything in our fridge sucked. But besides that, we had my grandmothers over, and we let my mother’s coworker and her boyfriend stay with us because their city evacuated. I had no excuses not to spend time with my friends. I was surrounded by friends and family the duration of the aftermath, and it was honestly very soothing and peaceful, since most people had evacuated or were staying inside with their own families. My town was practically a ghost town, but there was no light pollution blocking the stars, I went outside more, I laughed more, hell, I felt more like a person. And we made the best out of that shitty situation and I honestly remember it fondly.
Of course, I won’t have any of my friends with me. My mother’s coworker (who’s a good family friend now) will not be staying with us either. I won’t have that backbone. I’m more scared now, we have more to lose, this whole situation is already soaked in tragedy, but I will try to make the best of it. I’ll be forcing my parents to make better preparations tomorrow, and hopefully the stores will be more empty since most people are evacuating and will be gone already/in the process of leaving. I rediscovered my love for reading at the beginning of August, and I have plenty of books to keep me company. Like I said before, we have plenty of candles. I’m going to try to bury myself in reading and painting and maybe even writing. I’m going to try and become more in tune with myself, and progress my witchcraft in ways I might not be able to with the distraction of electronics and social media. I might be on every once in awhile to check in, but I’ll mostly use it to check the news or keep it off to reserve battery. If you don’t hear from me in the coming days, the power went off, and I’m doing what I’ve said above. Sorry for this pseudo-rant, I just needed to get out my frustrations so I could come to that hopeful conclusion. if you read all of this, kudos to you!
Stay safe, y’all.
Eva