The feeling of home

Hi, everyone! I have been MIA for a while for various reasons- mainly because of hurricane Maria (and more recently, I haven’t had much time to do anything but study.) Still, I wanted to share this. I wrote it around 3 weeks after the hurricane hit.

Before you read it, just know I’m kind of in a better place emotionally now, since uni has been an amazing distraction. I’ll probably write more about that later- but for now, here’s this post.

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I might have listened to Bridget Mendler’s ‘Hurricane’ more times than it is socially acceptable during and after a category 5 hurricane.

Okay, bear with me. You’ve more than certainly have heard about Maria’s passage through Puerto Rico during the past 3 weeks (?) Things were rough, they still are. And even I tend to forget that.

I lost my home’s roof in a category 5 hurricane and I forget that. How is that even possible? I have had more than a few thoughts about leaving.

Listening to the news and hearing about people crying while getting hot meals? Listening to the news and hearing people begging for water!

Puerto Rico’s economy was in a crisis, a bad one. And Maria made it even worse. A catastrophic hurricane hadn’t passed though my country in almost a century… and then we lived my grandmother’s stories about that hurricane that basically traumatized her.

I probably will remember those sounds for the rest of my life. The feeling that it wouldn’t ever end, that we were stuck on a loop.

Sometimes I wake up and think everything is normal until I see my surroundings and remember it’s not. That I don’t have a (physical) home anymore. And that sincerely sucks.

Category 5 hurricanes suck. And 3 weeks after that? Yep. Still does.

“At least we have milk”,
“at least we have gasoline”,
“at least we have ice”
“At least-” and we start comparing our situation to other people who are literally living without a roof or access to water, or food with no outside help whatsoever. I honestly hate this. I might -MIGHT- be okay, but this whole situation took a toll on me. And it has been almost a month, and some things have normalized, but I still have to enter my (former, destroyed) home- house to search for things I can salvage- several times. Honestly, seeing my room in such a state left me almost numb. I started looking for things almost methodically, without any feelings, until that was not possible at all.

I see the post-it’s from people who sent me messages- ruined. I see some of my books- the ones I couldn’t save- ruined.

And then I think- I should know I am lucky. My extended family lent us a house while we can rebuild. I have an apartment rented that’s basically intact, I am going to start classes again this week.

But still- intend to forget. I lost my home. And how do you go on from that? From the memories, from their childhood innocence that made you think things were better than they were?

I still don’t have the answer to these questions. I probably never will, but it’s nice to write these things.

I have cried a couple of times after Maria, for several situations but it mostly accounts for one thing: the loss of a feeling I probably won’t recover for a while: the sense of home.

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Relationships and Desirability (aka “Maybe I’m the problem?”)

I have already written about this, but I don’t care.

Hello, everyone. May I direct you to a previous post that has a lot to do with what I feel right now? Things haven’t changed at all since that day, so yeah…

Don’t get me wrong. I can see the perks of being single, and I am enjoying some of them, the sense of freedom, you know. I just have a lot of trouble feeling like I could be… what’s the word? Oh, yes, desirable. That someone could be with me because they actually like me. Like I said in the post I linked earlier, I have not fallen in love… yet, and although I have had a few offers (Yes, I’m using this word purposefully) to be in a relationship, I don’t feel they’re serious. (Besides, there’s always the “you like me, I like someone else” situation. I have talked about this with my mom. She seems to agree.) That has happened to me a few times, and I have had a hard time believing I could ever be in a relationship.

My friends don’t believe I’ve never been in a relationship before. My lab partner recently even used the word “gorgeous” to describe me. It’s not that I don’t believe her, it’s just that my whole life, people have never noticed me the way I want to be noticed. I was the bookworm, the one that always spent her time alone at the library because people did not understand how much I loved books.

When my brother was talking to us about his experience with relationships, (yes, my “little” brother) my mom talked about how people his age tend to play with the idea of love. I told my mother I didn’t go through that stage, and she said I did. That there was this person I could have been with in high school and he could have thought I wasn’t the one because of which books I liked and how we fought. (yes, we tended to fight, and I actually remember liking it.) Who knows? Maybe we were meant to be, but I can’t keep thinking about the past. Keep moving forward, and all that.

Recently, in college, things changed somehow, but basically stayed the same. I found people like me, but I still felt like an outcast. I have found people that understand, which is nice, but I haven’t found that person. The person that I want to be with physically and emotionally, while he wants to be with me, too. I don’t know. Maybe I have to keep waiting? I have zero experience with this. I don’t like not knowing. It has been way too long…!

Who knows? Maybe, as I’m writing this, there’s someone thinking about me. Someone I haven’t even considered yet. Let’s hope. Let’s believe the future can be better! (Or that I can start enjoying to be single. Whichever comes first.)

Love: My inexperience in that matter.

One of the things I have thought about the most throughout my life is the fact that I have never truly fallen in love. I mean, I have had crushes, yes, but I realize I am afraid of attaching myself to a person in that magnitude. I definitely wish I could get over that fear, especially as I’m getting older.

I don’t know if I should say this in my blog, but I’ve never been in a relationship. In fact, I’ve never even kissed anyone. I crave that kind of closeness, and I don’t know how to achieve it. People around me are all outgoing, believing in themselves, throwing themselves out there in the best possible way, and yet I’m stuck. I don’t know how to accept myself with all my flaws.

How can I accept someone else?
How can anyone accept me?

These are some of my thoughts, and my main reasons to be afraid.
I certainly wish I can one day fall in love, and realize it was as beautiful as I have always believed. I have read lots of books about love, read about hundreds of people falling in love, out of love and their reasons to do so. Then again, they’re fictional. Love is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world, and I want to live it for myself. I think I deserve it.