June 26, 2013

  • A Blue Curtain.

    That is what landed me here, reluctantly asking for help from strangers because I can't afford anything - something I always thought I'd be on the other end of when I was growing up. Well, turns out some dreams don't come true.

    6 months ago, I had everything. I wasn't making any more money than I am now, but I was rich with joy and happiness. I rejoiced constantly in knowing that my cup runneth over. I was blessed beyond what I deserved. I lived in an older, three bed/three bath apartment that I shared with my boyfriend Carlton, two roommates, Keith, and Drew, and usually Keith's girlfriend, Katlin, who basically lived there too. It wasn't what some would call 'nice', but to me it was perfect; it was home. My roommates, whom I didn't know before moving in, had become my family, and our neighbors became our best friends, who came over daily. Growing up in a family of five, with parents who had never divorced, a little sister, a little brother, and a slew of pets, made me accustomed to someone always being around. Due to that, I guess I've always had a subtle, sub-concious fear of being by myself, and my defense mechanism is to shut myself off from the world and sleep. Some days when Carlton was at work and I was left by myself, I didn't feel like getting out of bed, or doing anything but mope around in my room alone, so I'd lock my doors, and hide behind a pair of blue curtains that hung in place of the blinds my dog had eaten. But on those days, I never even had a chance to be depressed because, like my family, there was always someone who showed up to knock on my door for as long as it took until I finally gave up on pretending to be asleep, and was forced to get up and be social. I fell for it every time. I always planned on answering the door, telling them I was sleeping, and then going back to moping. But they wouldn't let me. "I just have to talk to you for a second." turned every would-be lonely day, into a day of laughter, video games, and happiness, everytime. I never did figure out how they knew when I was hiding and needed to be dragged out of my troubles, but I always figured there must have been some gap that I'd missed when closing those big, blue curtains. We all took care of each other. Carlton and I didn't have a car, but we had bikes, and his job, grocery stores, fast food, and almost anything, was within a ten minute bike-ride at most. Divided between our roommates, our portion of rent plus utilities was an unbelievably low amount, but the apartment wasn't run down at all, or in a bad part of town, and it was HUGE. It wasn't new and elegant like other apartments, but we weren't paying for a fancy paint job. We were paying for things that actually mattered - things that the fancy-new-paint-job apartments just don't have. We lived on the first floor, and never had to trudge up a flight or two of stairs with groceries falling from our hands. We each had our own front door, thermostat, hot water heater, two closets plus a linen closet, and full bathroom in our rooms, except Drew's, which was just outside his room. Before moving in, I was excited about all the privacy-potential our room would have, because I was worried it might be awkward to share a living situation with people I'd never met. But little did I know that we would all become so much like family, that the doors to our rooms were rarely closed, and we shared everything, including TVs, game consoles, and furniture that we all kept in the living room so it was accessible to everyone. We had family meals together, went places together, had video gaming tournaments that everyone came over to participate in, and every weekend we had "Game-Day" which was our favorite tradition - our friends came over with food and drinks, and we'd all dress up in our favorite teams' football jerseys and gather around the TV together to cheer on our teams. So poor in money, but rich in joy; I had everything. I was happy. But then it changed.

    It all happened so fast, but it's not a blur. No, I can remember every scene, every feeling, and every moment of that night vividly - I always will. We were gathered in Drew's room playing video games. Then we were in the kitchen refilling the ice trays. Then we were looking up what was supposed to happen in "the end of the world" out of curiosity (it was the night before the Mayan's predicted the world would end - we didn't buy into it). "It starts with fire." That was the first line in the article that I'd found online about the Mayan prophecy. It went on to tell about what would happen after the fires started, but I didn't read much more because frankly, I didn't believe it enough to care. I announced how the world was supposed to end to my friends and roommates, and then, a little before midnight, I went to my room to go to sleep, and closed those blue curtains - for the last time. Just after midnight, on the eve of the end of the world, we awoke to pounding on our door - by firemen. What happened in the next few hours is pointless to talk about now.

    I went to sleep around 7am, and dreamed that we were all in the living room in our jerseys, laughing, cheering, commiserating when needed - another good old Game Day - and my team was winning. But I never got to see them win, because I was pulled away from the living room I knew and the people I loved, by my cousin waking me up to take us to a church where the Red Cross was compiling donations - for me. I can't explain the feeling that panged in my chest upon hearing the words 'Red Cross', or opening my eyes to walls that were not mine, other than just to say 'sinking'. With each second, my dream grew more distant; with each breath, everything became more real; with each word about donations and disaster-relief that my cousin spoke, panic welled up inside of me - as if there was any way to save it now; and with each glance around the house that was not my home, my home existed less and less. My whole apartment had burned down the night before, but my home didn't burn down until I woke up. And when it burned, it burned away little by little. A glance at my cousin's bed, burned my bed down; the feel of the unfamiliar blanket, turned my blanket to ashes; a look at the one closet in my cousin's room, burned all three of my closets away; everything I saw, made something disappear. A turn of my head, and my room was gone; a blink of an eye, and a lifetime of pictures and scrapbooked-memories faded as if they'd never been there; a touch of the wall, and suddenly all of my walls fell down, and my apartment collapsed. Just like that. My home was gone. And it was no more. But the second my cousin hugged me and handed me a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap, a pair of hotel-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and a washcloth, all packed into a plastic, white bag that said "Red Cross Disaster Relief" on it, my sinking feeling vanished just as quickly as my home had, and was replaced with nothing - also like my home. I was numb when I brushed my teeth with the strange toothbrush; I was numb when I went to talk to the Red Cross; I was numb while I searched racks of donated clothes for things to wear - they said, "Take as much as you want." I didn't take much. - I was numb. Then they took me back to the place where I'd lived no more than 24 hours before, because I wanted to see. They said it was a bad idea, but I had to look - I just had to know. That's when I found out exactly what was left, and it was nothing at all. Three buildings in the complex were now no more than a seared pit of black dust with smoke still coming up from the last of the embers, and somewhere in there, at the edge of the pit, near someone's charred truck, was a little corner of dust that held my attention. My dust. And I was numb. No tears were dropped, no words were uttered, no emotions were felt - just numb. Three buildings were burned to the ground. Three buildings, all gone. Not a thing was left standing at all, except one little part of someone's wall, which was no more than a few bricks, the frame of a glass-less window - and one small, singed piece of a blue curtain. Numb.

    And it started with fire.