What a hell of a year, what a hell of a couple of weeks. If a pandemic wasn't bad enough, the last couple of weeks have really pounded me into the ground. I'm tired. I want a break.
Raising a child in a pandemic is hard. Schooling her through zoom, the tears, the crying, the missing of friends, the missing of a childhood. It's just as hard on me as a parent watching my child suffer. Raising a black (mixed) child in this world scares me in every moment. People are being killed for it. I'm scared that it'll get worse.
Then the fire came, 80,000 + acres burned that forced me out of my home and into random hotels for the last several weeks. We tried to stay with family, my mother in law. She has mental health issues. At first everything was "ok". My daughter did her zoom school on the floor, I worked remotely from a desktop in the corner, my spouse continued working remotely. All we had for the moment was to wait for another evac order or for the fires to get fought back.
The fires reached my house and the fire fighters dug in, quite literally there. I live on the outskirt of the city, there's literally no other house between me and the red wood forest. They dug a trench, stationed all of the firefighters there. Knowing if they couldn't stop it there, the entire city would have to evacuate. They told us to assume worst, no rain in sight, the wind was pushing the wrong way, there wasn't enough resources.
But then it did rain, even though it only rains in the winter here, it rained for about 30 minutes. A literal miracle. With that rain came a change in wind direction. With that change in wind direction it brought the fog from the ocean. Fire fighters from neighboring states and areas came to support. Within a day the fire was pushed back a mile after kissing my back yard.
The next day my mother in law had a mental break down. It was unhealthy for everyone. My child was being mentally abused, we were all tired and sad even after the miracle of the largest fire ever being contained in my backyard. We couldn't return until there was more containment. We moved to a hotel and stayed for 2 days, then waited in our car with all of our belongings we could fit to the ceiling until we could check in at a new hotel.
We got a call that my mother in law attempted suicide. She's ok, but of course it took it's mental toll on everyone.
We returned home after it was cleared. We lost nothing physical. Its good to sleep in my own bed again.
I stepped down as a moderator. I didn't want to be in a position where I reacted with emotion instead of sound judgement.
There's been positive things happening though. In no particular order:
My spouse purchased renters insurance a day before we evacuated. They covered all of the food/hotel costs minus the deductible. We live in Family Housing at an University and they covered our deductible and gave us a $200 gift card for groceries. They didn't have to do that, but I'm extremely greatful.
We received RA positions where we live. My job paid for rent and gave us a little bit of extra, but now I have that job and our rent is covered under the new position. I'm extremely greatful for the oppurtunity.
I recently started a gofundme for ForNoReason who had his laptop and mic stolen. We surpassed our goal for him!
Things will get better. Things have just been hard. Thanks for reading, sorry for the drama.
