I went to the site of where my cousins houses were…it was completely destroyed. Houses washed off their foundations, piles of rubble. Only a few were left standing although they are completely ruined and they aren’t sure they can be salvaged. I think they’d have to just gut everything including the ceilings and start from scratch. Then again, they might be unsafe to be in, like the foundation being cracked on one of them…I don’t know, it’s just bad. Really bad. I only got a couple of pics because it was the exact same scene over and over for like a mile.

It gets worse and worse…there’s a strip of land close to the lake that belongs to some of our cousins. They all live on this stretch of land, which is right on the river. We just heard that all but one or two of their homes were literally swept away. The water was up to the roofs. The one that didn’t float away was a brick house, but another house ran into it and cracked the foundation. Me and mom are going up there tomorrow to see it. Good lord.

Mom and dad have electricity again, finally! I’m super happy for them, because my mom was sooo miserable. Dad handled it better, all he wanted was his ceiling fan. I still can’t believe my electricity came after one day, on last Saturday. I think the universe knew I couldn’t handle it. Really.

Asheville had a bunch of mudslides and no one knows how many people died. FEMA isn’t doing shit, last time I heard. More like hindering the process. They might even give people who lost EVERYTHING $750! Wow! Even though they have to apply for it online…and there’s no internet…the fuck? This is how they treated those poor people in Lahaina, HI after the fires. While they’re spending disaster relief money on other shit… Dolly Parton has done much more than the federal government. Thank the gods for people like that. And for all the civilians who go in to help. I hear FEMA was blocking them from helping. You can’t depend on the government. They will let you languish for as long as they can get away with it and maybe drop a pittance on you if they’re feeling benevolent (read: shamed into it). They will let you die. Can you tell how I feel about the government…lol

Anyhow more things are open now so we got to eat Chinese tonight. I overdid it. Severely.

The waters have receded in some places. You can see how high it was because everything that was under water is discolored. It was HIGH. Mom and dad still don’t have power, they have water though. Still can’t drink it without boiling. I wonder how long that’s going to last…I think I might have accidentally drank some before I got that notification and it made me sick. 🤢 My stomach is super messed up. I’ve quite literally been chugging pepto bismol.

It’s bad and I don’t want to get into it anymore because it’s so depressing. People are missing.

I’m just scared the water will suddenly stop. I don’t think the power will but the water situation is sketchy at best.

I don’t think it hit me how bad this is until today. We don’t have drinkable water for who knows how long, but I’m hearing weeks. If I want to drink or cook with water, I must boil it for one minute. We have a water shortage because everyone is buying it up. The waters have not receded much if at all. I don’t know how long that’ll take. No one has internet unless they use cellular data on their phones, which is what I’m doing. That’s weird because I had internet yesterday. I still have water…for now. I don’t know what they’re planning to do about that because most people I know don’t have electricity or water right now. I’m so lucky to have both and I willl never take electricity for granted again. I swear. The short time I spent without it was truly miserable. I remember when one of the cities in NC had their power go out and it took weeks to fix it. I was so scared it was gonna be like that here. I think they should probably get it fixed in the next few days, at least I hope. I told my parents to come over and take a shower whenever they feel the need. Poor mom, I know how she feels. I was straight up nasty yesterday. The nastiness went from zero to sixty real fast lol

I wonder who’s getting pummeled by Helene now? I haven’t been able to watch the news yet, my tv just started working sometime today while I was gone. I hope they don’t get it so bad. It still amazes me how a hurricane wrecked us so bad, they’ve even prohibited travel in western NC and closed down a lot of interstate. I guess there must be flooded parts, they did not give an explanation.

I have been so incredibly tired today and haven’t been getting my daily 62oz of water since this started. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it but yeah…I went to bed early last night and woke up this afternoon still feeling tired. I immediately fell asleep in the car. I got to my parents dark, powerless house, ate my takeout, and promptly fell asleep on the couch. I was semi awake for a while until dad drove me home. Then I came in and…fell asleep again. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I can’t wait to see the sleep doctor. Maybe they’ll know how to fix me.

So the last couple of days have been awful. I haven’t slept in well over 24 hours. I spent the night with my parents Friday and “slept” on their couch, meaning…I got no sleep whatsoever. I had watched a couple YouTube videos before my phone died and then…nothing. Nothing to watch, nothing to read, nothing to do, just laid there in a fair amount of pain staring into the darkness. Dad’s dog Lucy was kind enough to guard me all night which I appreciated. It would have been worse if I was out there alone. I was already depressed about the whole disaster, but after talking to their neighbours I really started to freak out. One of their grandsons had gone around finding out all he could about when things would open again, when the electricity and water would come back on and where we could possibly get water, because there is a big shortage. It’s like toilet paper at the beginning of Covid. Anyhow, he said he was told it could be three days to a week before the power came back and my heart SANK. I don’t handle this stuff well, never have, and it affects my mental health really badly. I didn’t know if I could last that long. No phone, no tv, no internet, no water, no nothing. I got pretty depressed fast. We finally found one place that was open and ate there.

And fucking WALMART of all places was closed.  It wasn’t because they didn’t have power, because they somehow got it back pretty quickly. Know why? LOOTERS. Stupid motherfuckers gotta ruin it for everyone else. People are actual trash. Boo.

Anyhow, I was feeling repulsive, my hair was so oily and I just felt grimy. We got home and the neighbors told us the water came back on. Omg. I wanted to jump in the shower immediately. Come to find out it was actually shutting off again and I had to take a whole ass shower with literally drops of water. It was difficult and tired me out completely. Mom took me home to get some things because I was going to spend the night over there again and….my power was back on! I almost screamed. No water though. It’s fucking miraculous because most of town is still without electricity and we don’t have any idea when the water will come back. Apparently the pumps are UNDER WATER.

Oscar was really happy to see me though!

They’re classing this storm as a catastrophe. I haven’t seen a worse hurricane since 1989, Hurricane Hugo, and it was a blip compared to this. Also trees fell on 3 of my parents neighbors houses. I didn’t get a pic of that for some reason but it did huge amounts of damage. I’m glad they were spared that.

The stupid hurricane is supposed to hit tonight or tomorrow. If my power goes out…. I will lose my mind. I’m afraid of the dark. 😅