Autumn 2014

In September, my boyfriend and I broke up.

Then I lost my full time job.

And in November, my apartment flooded and I had to move out.

It’s been a hell of a ride, to say the least, but hot damn! if it hasn’t been the best fall of my life! Let me tell you why.

I had met this guy in June, and by July was convinced that we were going to get married and live happily ever after in a different country for the rest of our lives. But August was an . . .  interesting month for us, to say the least, and since he’d actually prefer not to appear in my blog at all, I’ll just leave it at that. I still went to visit him in September to see if we’d be able to continue things long-distance, but the day before I flew back to Raleigh, we figured out that our life paths were actually not going in the same direction at all. So we broke it off for good. Two weeks after that, I met a fellow ESL teacher, tip-toed into a cautious relationship, discovered that we compliment each other perfectly, and then cannonballed headfirst with no regrets. (More on that later.)

Back to my Mexico trip. The day after returning, I walked into work (having just received a fairly positive yearly evaluation six days before) to the news that they didn’t want me to work there anymore. So now I don’t. Before two days had passed, however, I picked up enough hours at my other job to make it through the end of the year, so I am not going hungry. 

I could make it through losing my boyfriend and losing my job without tearing up once, but I can’t say the same for losing my apartment. It has easily been the worst thing that’s ever happened to me (and ironically the best, but we’ll get to that later). For anyone who’s ever been inside of it, you know that Apartment 202 was my nest, my home, exactly the way I wanted it to be. I was friends with the guy upstairs and the girl next door, and I hosted parties as often as I could. This is the apartment with the bright red couch, the multicolored rug on the floor, the ivy green living room wall, decorated with souvenirs from Japan, the Philippines, Mexico, and Bolivia. This is the apartment that was my first real apartment just for me since 2005. Now, knowing that I’ll never again step foot in it, cleaves my heart in two.

Technically the investigation is still underway, but it seems as though someone left a cigarette burning on the balcony on November 10, and it caught the entire third floor on fire. When the firefighters came to put it out, they dumped enough water on the building to cascade into the second and first floors as well, making the whole building uninhabitable for the next six or eight months, I think.

I was at home when the fire started at 2:30 p.m. that Monday, and watched with my next-door neighbor as the top floor went up in flames. After being interviewed by a million different TV stations and newspapers (y’all knew that already, right?), all of us who had lost our homes gathered in the community center at the apartment complex to discuss our next steps.

I had held it pretty much together for those first four hours, surviving on adrenaline and publicity, but when the Red Cross and Disaster Relief folk started talking in plain terms about staying in hotels, emergency funds, and all the rest, the tears started coming. Luckily, Brian was at my side the whole time, providing comfort and strength just when I needed it most. (He’s a good guy to have around in an emergency, too; he stays calm and doesn’t freak out when the rest of the world is. This is also the guy who, only knowing my name and that my insurance company was “some subset of Geico?” managed to file a claim on my behalf an hour after the fire started—and he’s not even on my policy.)

That first night, I stayed at Brian’s (who’s staying in a house with his friends), trying to put on a brave face for the strangers I was suddenly living with. But after everyone else had gone to bed, I wrapped up in a blanket on the couch and Brian let me sob on his shoulder inconsolably for an hour. I finally passed out around 12:30 but was up at 3:30 a.m., unable to sleep or quit thinking of all the things I had probably lost.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my apartment door at 8:30 a.m. to a perfectly whole abode. Whole as in not in pieces. The upstairs apartments were mostly ash, fallen insulation, and smoke; the roof had collapsed to let the sunlight stream in. The plaster ceiling in my place was hanging on precariously in some parts, but was still intact. Everything looked the same as usual, except that it was all sopping wet. The carpet squished, streams of water cascaded from the dining room chandelier onto the table, the bed was a sodden mess of smoky blankets – but everything was whole.

Despite its wholeness, I still lost a lot. All the furniture was ruined; so was anything that plugged in.

More than half of my books were gone, and all of my important papers (graduation certificates, insurance policies, credit card statements) were all dripping wet (shoulda got me a filing cabinet years ago!). But there was a lot to save: my cookbooks were all fine, my work computer was OK, most of my photographs survived, 99% of my clothes just needed a good washing with vinegar, and the cedar chest that dad had built after chopping down a cedar tree made it through relatively unscathed.

However, after that first initial glee that I hadn’t lost everything, I was suddenly struck with the reality of the situation: I had 48 hours to remove everything salvageable from my apartment before the disaster relief people closed the building up for good. I was moving, the quickest I had ever had to move in my life. I had to make instant decisions about what was good and what was lost, what to keep and what to throw away, all the while working in a cold, dark, wet apartment without electricity or running water. Plus, everything was damp or actually wet to the touch: twice I had puddles of standing water fall on me while I was removing plastic boxes from the closet. That first day, my dad, Brian, another friend and I spent eight hours loading up everything that could be salvaged and hauling it over to Knightdale. The second day, only Brian and I came back to itemize everything that was lost.

I only broke down once during that whole two-day process: in a sudden flash of understanding I realized that I was packing up my apartment for good and would never, never return there. I was reminded of leaving my apartment in Takasaki back in August 2012 and how I cried in every room as I was saying goodbye. But at least then I knew I was leaving. I had known for months that I was going back to the U.S. so it was hardly a surprise. This here, though, throwing everything haphazardly into plastic bins, hardly bothering to make sure it was secure before carting them off, felt more like Depression-era rapid relocation. It hurt to even think about the situation, it was so unexpected and tragic.

Fast forward a few days. We got everything packed up and moved. Three quarters of my belongings are in Brian’s friend’s garage; the other quarter is at another friend’s apartment. The apartment complex I was living at has offered me a two-bedroom, 2 ½ bathroom apartment on the third floor of another building for the same price that I had been paying for my one bedroom (only for six months, but what a deal!) that I have gratefully accepted. And the family Brian has been living with has been gracious enough to allow me to stay with them until my new apartment is available on December 10. What’s even better, I won’t be moving in alone: Brian is coming with me so we can start up a place of our own.

It has been a long, hard ride, these past few months. Losing a relationship, a job, and a place to live are all catastrophic in their own way. What’s more, they haven’t been events that just affected me, but other people as well: two other employees besides me were fired around the same time, and 11 other apartments were ruined besides mine (not that you’d know it from reading the news, ha).

But I feel that the outcomes of these life situations have been so positive that they make it all worthwhile. I have received so much support from my family, friends, church, and coworkers—even from people I don’t even know. I feel blessed to be taken care of so well. I’ve also made a lot of new friends out of all this disaster.

Each life event that has happened recently has been a catalyst for some major life changes that needed – and perhaps were going – to happen, now just a little sooner than I had expected them to. Suddenly all of those platitudes – when God closes a door, He opens a window; everything happens for a reason; every cloud has a silver lining . . . seem to be coming true. And life is becoming very, very good.

So.

In September, my boyfriend and I broke up.

Then I lost my full time job.

And in November, my apartment flooded and I had to move out.

But nothing, nothing, has brought me greater joy.