Serenity - A Journal Of Some Sort

how did we get here?

So, where have I been?

Not that anyone actually gives a crap, but oh boy, here we go. 

I got three damn days into school before a hurricane decides to be like yEEt I'm here to destroy your entire town and all the ones around it so you're out of electricity and water for half a month, have to evacuate to your grandparents' house across the state, your other grandparents that you just got used to living next to you have to move out because their house is ruined, put your dad in the hospital so you and your mom and your brother have to deal with all the prep and aftermath.

And it's not like we can go anywhere because covid decided to strike at literally the LEaSt convenient time, so everything is already shut down and restricted to the point where I couldn't even get into a library to do my virtual work that was due since my Wi-Fi router was out up until three days ago.

This all decides to happen right at the beginning of my senior year, which is now going to be nonexistent. I had only one face-to-face class a week due to covid, and now that is out of the window because campus is literally fucking destroyed.

There are no clubs. No sports. No social events. No homecomings, no proms. 

With all this craziness, I haven't been able to meet with the school counselor to even figure out anything college related, like scholarships and applications and ACT deadlines, which I'm sure is coming up soon but I can't get anything out of anyone and I'm sure is going to just screw me over in the end because of the circumstances.

My mom says I can't even get a job right now to help out, because I need to focus on school, but, like, what school? 

On a much more pettier note, on the one day I had gone to school, I found a guy that I think I liked, like actually maybe like liked, and I think that maybe he might have liked me back, which was something I didn't think could happen again. After the storm, he got in contact with me and we talked a lot about everything. For several days. And then all of a sudden he ghosted me.

So now I'm here, fighting back tears of frustration with the world, trying to work on ACT work in the midst of all this trying to earn an Honors College scholarship that I have no idea when it's due. 

I also find that throughout quarantine, I completely forgot how to math. So I'm about to completely embarrass myself, probably make a lower score than when I took it as a freshman.

Power finally came back on in my town the day before yesterday. We drove back here and moved back in as soon as we heard, but there's still so much destruction everywhere that we don't even know where to begin. My dad lost his entire shed, there's water damage in the house and we're going to have to gut half of it, there's so much debris in the yard that we can't even move most of it, and my grandparents' house in front of us has to be completely rebuilt.

But there's nothing we can do right now. We have to wait on insurance and money and help and so many other things that all we can do is try to carry on as normal.

The only thing right now I can focus on right now is school and I don't even know how to do that right now. 

Today, I'm standing there next to one of the American Red Cross food trucks handing out dinner plates to the people who don't have food right now. I volunteered for the hell of it, to do something besides ACT work. 

We're in the school parking lot, and I feel a cool breeze, and all of a sudden I'm flashed back to a whole year ago, sitting in my new car, crying about my recently-lost ex-boyfriend, after practice, sweaty in my dance clothes, with mounds of homework in the back, when the first breeze of autumn finally blows through and I wonder if all my problems will ever feel this huge.

I see it through my eyes here, and the only coherent string of thought I can put together is, "What the hell happened?"

How the hell did we get here?