We’re home! We have power! Still no word on when my surgery will be rescheduled for, but after seeing the damage this storm has caused I feel so grateful that the only thing that happened to me was this minor inconvenience. Yesterday, our governor declared a state-wide state of emergency. At least four six people have died as a result of the storm, and many more are injured, sick, or homeless. One man had ten trees fall and demolish his home. Ten. The Red Cross has shelters set up for people who still have no power- last night the temperatures dropped way below freezing, and are expected to reach only into the upper 30’s today. People like us, who have no fireplace or stove, have no means of heating their homes without power, and some of them are going on day three in the dark.

We were completely unprepared for the severity of the storm. We had heard the forecasts, but with Ammon busy at work preparing to take time off and me busy at home getting ready to be off my feet for three weeks, we had more pressing issues on our minds. I was driving home late Thursday night when the winds started. My gas gauge was dipped below E, but we had a babysitter at home that needed to leave so I decided to wait until morning to fill up. Bad decision number one.

Lying in bed that night, we couldn’t sleep because the winds were pounding against the side of the house, slamming bits of debris against the windows. Our power went out around three in the morning. We got up at 5:30, showered in the dark, and got ready to head over to the hospital. When the hospital called to tell us they had no electricity, we got our first glimpse of how severe the storm had actually been. Turning on the radio confirmed that most of the area was without power as a result of downed trees and electrical lines. When the sun came up, we could see that our fence had blown down. There were branches littering the road, and when I looked out the window and saw the rain was mixed with snow, I knew we had to get somewhere where we could stay warm until the power came back on. We had only been without electricity for a few hours, but the temperature in the house had already dropped a dozen degrees. Packing our overnight bags, we debated which car to take. Ammon had a full tank of gas in his, but we have better car seats in my car and we had heard on the radio that there was a gas station a couple of miles away that was still working. So we took my car. Bad decision number two.

There were trees down everywhere, some being held up over the road by power lines. All the stop lights were out. We made it to the gas station to find it out of service. We had enough gas to make it back home and switch cars, but we were sure we could find a gas station soon, so we decided to keep going. Bad decision number three. With all the lights out, the backups going through town were miles long, the cars barely inching along. Each gas station we passed was dark and empty, with folks as desperate as we were peering in the windows and trying each pump without luck. By the time the car started sputtering, we had made it through two cities and passed by more than ten gas stations. We were able to make it into the parking lot of a car dealership before the car ran out of gas completely. I set off to ask around at the few mechanic shops in the area to see if anyone had a gallon to spare, but I came back to the car empty handed. We called AAA, but were told there was no gas anywhere and they couldn’t come and tow us unless it was an emergency. Since we were on our way to my parents’ house, I called my dad to see if he had any idea what to do. He knew of a small pocket of stores near his house that had somehow been spared by the widespread power outage, so he told us to stay where we were and he would bring us some gas. What should have been a twenty minute drive took him over an hour, but he finally made it to us. While we were waiting for him, we had heard on the radio that the two gas stations on the Eastside that were in service had lines of hundreds of cars, and the police had to come control the frantic crowds. The gallon my dad brought us got us almost all the way to his house, but we broke down again on a side street we had driven on to try to avoid the backups on the main roads. We piled into my dad’s truck, and finally made it to his house. By the time we got there, it was early evening and beginning to get dark. It had taken us almost seven hours to make it 20 miles.

We huddled around the fireplace in my parents’ living room until mercifully, the power came on at around 8:00 that night. My dad and Ammon went out to retrieve our car, and fill it up at one of the busy gas stations. Late yesterday morning, we heard that our neighborhood’s electricity had been restored, so we came home. Our house was freezing, even with the heat blasting. I went out with my camera to take some pictures of the damage. Our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Almost everyone who had trees on the south side of their home had some kind of damage:

Sidewalks were completely impassable:

Guard rails were demolished:

This family had damage to their home and their car:

We lost our fence, but again, we’re so incredibly thankful the damage wasn’t worse. Our hearts go out to the families who are still trying to stay warm in their darkened homes, or whose property has been damaged as a result of the storm. If you have loved ones in the Pacific Northwest, try to get in contact with them to make sure they’re ok and see if they need any help. 911 operators and emergency response personnel have been inundated with calls and requests. This storm was bigger than anyone expected, and although most folks were more prepared than we were, no one could have predicted this widespread damage. We are still in shock.

Guess what? I didn’t have surgery this morning! There was a massive wind storm that knocked out the power in most of western Washington. Over a million homes lost electricity, including ours and including the hospital where my surgery was supposed to take place. We’re at my mom’s house right now, where the power just came back on about an hour ago. Apparently it could take up to ten(!) days to restore power to our neighborhood. So. Awesome.

I have no idea when I’ll get rescheduled for the surgery. Hopefully SOON, since Ammon has the time off right now. I’ll try to post again tomorrow with the fun story of how we got to my parents house. There are lots of fun parts to the story, like the part where we ran out of gas but ha! There was no power for miles and miles and miles and thusly no gas to be found anywhere. That was fun.

Tomorrow at this time I should be just waking up in the recovery room after the long-awaited ankle surgery.

I’ve never been under general anesthesia before. I am absolutely terrified.

One of my very favorite smells…

More red here.

(P.S. go vote for Breed ‘em and Weep in the Weblog Awards! It doesn’t get any better than her, folks. She deserves it.)

I don’t read books- I devour them. From the first sentence to the last, I can barely turn the pages fast enough. Sometimes, when I can tell something important is going to happen in the story, I have to hold my hand over the paragraphs I haven’t read yet to keep myself from skipping ahead. Do you remember when Harry Potter fell into the Pensieve in Dumbledor’s office and became immersed in Dumbledor’s memories as if they were really happening? Yes, I know that was the absolute dorkiest reference I could have ever made, but reading is kind of like that for me. I fall into the book. I become so engrossed in the beautiful words that I’m not ready to come out again once I’ve finished the last page. It’s funny… after I’ve ravished the book from beginning to end as quickly as I possibly can, I will then go back to the front cover and slowly search for any words that I haven’t yet read. I read the title again, the author, the copyright, the printing history. I wade my way through the acknowledgements and the dedications, and relish every word about the author inside the back cover. Even though I couldn’t ingest the story fast enough, I’m never ready to let it go once it’s over.

Sometimes I feel like I have rushed through my life the same way I read my books. I was so eager to grow up, that as soon as I could get away with it I put on my “big girl” face and pretended I didn’t know how young I was. In some ways, I believe I was forced to age as quickly as I did in order to make it through. Everyone always tells me what an old soul I am, that I am wise beyond my years. But I suppose when you’ve experienced pain so deep it doesn’t even have a name, there’s nothing else you can do but grow up. I think I’ve written a bit about my depression before. I’m too tired to dig through my archives right now so I’ll just start at the beginning, I suppose.

It happened quickly and without warning, a few weeks after my fourteenth birthday. School was out for a week, and during those seven days I morphed into someone I no longer recognized. Nothing about my life made sense anymore. I stopped talking to my friends, I completely changed my wardrobe, I started listening to different music, I dyed my hair. None of this was out of any forethought or premeditation. Everything seemed to happen on its own, like I had lost my grip on the person I thought I was, and this other person was now in control. I had no idea why I needed to do those things, but that was just it- I needed to do them. Something scary was changing inside of me, I could feel it looming big and dark under the surface, and I was doing everything I could to run away from it. But as the months went by, I slipped further and further into a major depression. I was absolutely terrified of what was happening to me. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that it hurt and that as hard as I tried, I couldn’t explain it or understand it. That’s when I started cutting myself. The relief of finally feeling a pain I could comprehend, something that forced me to remember I was me again, was beautiful. The problem was, as much as it helped to make sense of the pain inside me, I knew that cutting myself wasn’t normal. The fact that I could see how much I needed to do it made me feel crazy. But the more I tried to stop, the more everything inside me overwhelmed and consumed me. I guess I was unconsciously looking for a more “normal” escape from it all, so when the opportunity arose to try drugs for the first time, I was all for it.

The first time I got high was the most surreal, transcendent experience I had ever had. I always tell people that it was like I had had a headache my entire life without even realizing it was there, and one day someone handed me an aspirin. My pain completely disappeared. I could breathe again. I didn’t have to think or feel or understand… all I had to do was be. You can imagine how things went from there. With such a perfect remedy out there for my pain, how could I not do it? It was between fighting the dark, often suicidal thoughts that flooded my mind constantly, and doing something that I knew was dangerous and illegal but that helped me. It helped me. That’s not a justification, it’s a fact. It got me through, for awhile anyway. Until, like any unhealthy method of coping, it became a problem of its own.

I’ll write more about this later, but I want to stop here and tell you that I am not trying to whine about what a difficult life I’ve lived. I grew up as a smart, privileged suburbanite and although my life has not been without its challenges, I know that I have been extremely lucky. My parents are good people who loved me and did what they thought was best. And even though I disagree with much of the way they dealt with things back then, I don’t see them as anything but two people who were as lost and confused about life as I was. In no way do I believe I am entitled to your pity or sympathy because I believe my life was more difficult than yours. What this is for me is owning those experiences. I am shining a light into the dark places that I have been ashamed of, doing my best to understand them and weave them into now in order to give strength to the woman I have become. As I have said before, I’m not writing this for you anymore. I’m doing it for me. Just like I rush through the words of a really great novel, I have barreled through my life with barely a sideways glance. Now that I know how things turn out for the main character, I can relax, go back to the beginning, and luxuriate in the details.

I know where I am, I just have to go back and figure out exactly how I got here.