It really felt like time had slowed down as I exchanged tweets with fellow friends living somewhere else on the East Coast, motivating each other that things would be ultimately fine for all of us. After a breaking news overload, I decided to distract myself and watched Ghost Adventures… I think ghosts are much scarier than hurricanes, because we don’t really know whether they exist, and what we would do if we faced one. Probably scream and run away, right? Or wave our arms really fast catching nothing but air. A hurricane simply leaves us powerless, impatient, eager for the deluge to be over so we can all finally breathe again…
I fell asleep around 1 am after checking the weather outside. It wasn’t really raining, and the wind was weak. I couldn’t see much of the street, because my apartment faces a courtyard and a softball field. Nothing seemed unusual. Only the big Xs taped on my neighbors’ windows reminded me that something was coming, something that we were all worried about.
I was mostly concerned about losing power. I wanted to write, use my phone and my computer… Going to work the next day didn’t really hit the top of my priority list, I must say. And yes, everything will probably be fine tomorrow with the subway system and I’ll be able to commute like every other day, as if nothing had happened.
I dreamt, but I slept peacefully. A noise woke me up at 7 am. My male cat had thrown up all over the hardwood floor – hairballs – and I had to clean up the mess after stepping into it. Of course…. But what about the deluge? I peeked outside and saw nothing. The sky looked merely overcast, and it wasn’t raining anymore. I checked my appliances and noticed that the power was still on.
Was I lucky not to be affected as much by the storm to the contrary of other millions of people living down the coast? Yes, of course. I prayed, tweeps prayed, my parents prayed that we’d be ok in the end, and we were. As if nothing had come. As if nothing ever came. Just another rainy day, that was all.
I turned on the TV and watched the news. I saw all the flooded areas down Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island… The storm caused damage, but we were spared. I felt the heaviness of the past few days finally leave my mind, and I smiled. My cats didn’t care either way. They slept the whole time, looking cute as pie.
All I’ll remember from Irene was this overcast sky looming upon us…and the stress, the never ending anxiety that kept me in a constant state of alert until I knew we were safe.
By the way, I have tons of water that will last me a week now. I guess that’s not so bad, right? 😉
The Manicheans 