Home and the Hurricane

 

A boy I went to public school with says he likes the blog, he said “…where you going to take us this time Sarah?”. Just home today honey.

Jesus wept I am weepy this week.
So I guess, Sarah wept.
Except talking about myself in third person is creepy.

Up at 6am to drive home after the craziest of 24 hours. I managed to side road around the road closures and 4×4 around the debris. and find the only gas station in God’s country that had power just as I thought I couldn’t handle the binging of the low gas light any longer.
Had the radio on (and I find this hilarious) “Environment Canada is trying to confirm reports of a tornado in Teviotdale Ontario.”
Well hmmm. I just drove through there and a house was torn in half and the top half was in a field on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD
I’m not saying it was a tornado, coulda been Godzilla.

I wish I had pulled over and snapped a picture, but I am not okay with garnishing attention from the pain and misfortune of others, only my own.

I cried for them, and for the trees snapped like twigs after 100 years of standing watch over these roads.

For the record I am on very little sleep, shark week is upon us, I am coming down off a pretty huge emotional/adrenaline high, and I have had a lot of coffee. I can see sounds right now.
Oh, and I have free time.

The things in my head will simmer down by next week and mewl instead of roar.*

So many things happened.
The creamy filling between the crunchy cookies of the two long weekends of summer has been…chaos.

There was a blue moon and a twister.

I got in a car wreck a few weeks back.
No fussin’ now, I am fine. Jeep didn’t make it.
We should have a moment of silence for Jeep. Poor thing went through a lot and somehow managed to keep running and hold the smell of Young Un. That I won’t miss. But I really liked my sunroof and bucket seats.

I called my sister. Told her the story of ice cube sized hail, trees bent in half and the green sky. I told her where I was and who I was with as it was happening…she said it sounded like a dream. It really felt that way too.

I saw my Grade 8 teacher, she is awesome and she loves me. I cried.
Oh ya, and I lived through a crazy-super-cell-storm-cluster-tornado-inducing mess coming in off of my lake whilst cloistered in a garage with 20 people I hadn’t seen in 27 years (the rest of my Grade 8 class) see photo above.

That happened, on Sunday.

I walked into a home I haven’t been in in well over 25 years and I was greeted with warm enthusiasm and fed really good food.

I felt valued and wanted, which is the polar opposite of how I felt for almost my entire life. I always felt out of place, barely tolerated. It wasn’t them making me feel that way then, it was me (sorta) and that one really bossy girl. We were with each other for a gargantuan percentage of our tiny little lives. It was important. They are important.

I cried while I was folding the blankets I had been given when I was welcomed into my girl’s house mid storm, like I belonged there or something. Her Riddy-dog made sure my face was clean before I left. That sense of belonging in any home but the ones I have built, is a really foreign feeling to me.

All of these feelings of inadequacy from my childhood just started falling away and I let them go.

I woke up at 3am to a cold, wet dog nose, she was just telling me the storm was still storming and reminding that I was, indeed, here. Wrapped in the softest of soft quilts in this cute little house, remembering how many times I had argued saying ‘I don’t care that ALL of the highways are closed. I just want to go home’. I had an epiphany, I was home.

These waves of love emanating from these people who have known me since I was a stupid kid, and some who know me now and somehow managed to accept me and love me regardless.
(Here we go, that one started a gusher.)

I cried when I jumped off the 401 and finally back into the land where I knew where I was. There was an hour and a half of feeling very lost, I had to logic directions, maneuver through ditches, around downed trees and tornado path detours. Proud tears.

I cried when Saint Anthony sent me a link to an 89 diesel Wagoneer for sale. It’s like he knows me or something.

Let’s stop there. So I can bring all of this back around in a somewhat sane manner.
(Because ya, the rest of this is perfectly normal.)

The 6th paragraph* is important.
It means I have a little perspective. I am more self-aware than I was a year ago. When Young Un bolted coincidentally, a calendar year and the truck still stunk, we could use that in an Axe ad.

Speaking to Saint Anthony was also important. Not just because I have nothing to drive.

I realized something.

“Maybe all of these things made me all that I am” (AWOLNATION)

I have been an epic fuck up. I have been selfish and cruel and stupid.
And sometimes people love me anyways.

I am forgivable and forgiven.

I am loveable and loved.

I had no idea.

I am almost happy I never felt this way before.
I can savour this now to the fullest and appreciate it in a way I don’t think I was capable of before.
I am 41 now and comfortable in my own skin regardless.
So this is just icing on the cake.
Home is no longer an address, it’s a state of mind.