After The Hurricane

I don’t know how to do this anymore.

I don’t want to be here.

I am afraid.

Twelve days ago I wrote the 355th of 365 consecutive blog posts in my 365 day experiment. I was so proud not to have missed a day and I wouldn’t have, I would have finished the 365 days two days ago on Sunday but twelve hours after I put the last blog post up the hurricane came, the power went, and we have had two weeks of the worst kind of nightmare. There is so much devastation in this town it is hard to find words to describe it all. And the aftermath is a mess. Still flooding everywhere. We are at risk of losing water. It will be months, years, before this town recovers.

If you have followed the news you will know what went on here in Wilmington, North Carolina. If you haven’t you probably don’t know or care, but for those of us who live here and went through it we are forever changed.

I was without power for a week here, and got the internet back today two days short of 2 weeks after losing it. I wanted badly to get it back, I felt so cut off from the world I thought I was losing my mind but today when it came back I didn’t know what to do. I sat staring at the computer crying. I didn’t know how to come back, where to begin, what to say. I don’t want to be here and I don’t know where to go.

I could put up lots of pictures of all of the devastation here. I took over 130 pictures of my home and yard, all the trees down, the one on the house, the huge limbs hanging, the broken things, the gate hanging open. I have shared some online through Instagram on my phone when I could and may in the days ahead. The tree on the house, the trees down everywhere, the broken fence, so many broken things, a broken life, two confused little dogs who are used to having a back yard to run and play in, a yard that isn’t now accessible or safe. They don’t understand how to walk on leashes in harnesses and the harnesses we have aren’t very safe. I ordered new ones today.

The new 365 day blog journey that I was going to have started yesterday, A Year With Anna, drawing and painting and writing a story about my sweet, whimsical alter-ego has been cancelled. I just can’t do it now. There is nothing lighthearted and whimsical here now. It is a shattered, devastated world, there is too much loss, too much sadness, too much confusion. I think that I will be doing a 365 day journey here about surviving. Surviving natural disasters, mental illness, aging and more. There is so much to survive every single day.

For tonight I am back. I will keep going. I will finish this first 365 days. I am afraid and overwhelmed and I don’t know how I am going to do it but this is the way I am going to begin to rebuild my life online. My life in the real world here in the brokenness will take so long to heal and reorder and make right I can’t begin to see how it will all happen. It will happen one day, one moment, at a time.

I hope you will bear with me, I hope you will pray for me, and for those who have sent prayers, and love, and support, and donations I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is all so badly needed. Keep praying. Something in me broke through all of this. I don’t know how to find my way back. I will, as I have for the last year, just keep showing up here. It’s the only thing I know how to do.