Breakdown #1

*Warning: This post will probably be a little depressing and sad, but completely 100% me at this very minute. I just wanted to warn everyone because apparently my last email moved several people to tears. Consider yourself warned.*

Tonight was the first breakdown I've had since the hurricane. I was in the shower tonight looking at the shower curtain and realized how badly I wanted it to have polka dots on it. You see, my shower curtain at home had blue and grey polka dots and I had literally spent months trying to find it. Well not that one in particular, but THE right one. And when I found it, I totally knew it was the right one. I loved my shower curtain so much that I made sure it was always closed so I could see the full pattern. Tonight, I was looking at fish. For whatever reason, it seemed on the opposite end of the world from polka dots. I looked around and even though I had been at my aunt's house for almost a month, not mention had visited numerous times, everything looked distant. I just wanted so badly to be in my bathroom with my polka dotted shower curtain and my ridiculously bright towels and to have to contort and stretch myself when I tried to shave. I missed all these things. I realized today was one month since Hurricane Ike made landfall. A month and two days since I had been home. I knew this feeling would hit sometime, the feeling that I wanted to go home but just couldn't. And here it is. At this moment, I am completely despising my aunt's house, even though she's been nothing but hospitable to me and has even gone out of her way to make me more comfortable. I just want MY things, in MY house, to sleep in MY bed, to read by MY light, which happened to be the first item I bought for my new house at Claud's, which no longer exists either. I miss it so much. And I can never have it back. No matter how many hours I spend wandering around the peninsula and happen to salvage or how many things I rebuy, it will never be the same. I took me 17 months to get my house this way and I really really REALLY liked it. I loved entertaining people, I had already made plans for next summer for everyone to come down. I was ready to start a yearly summer party plan, if you will. It just sucks and the worst part is, that no matter how much I write or how I try to describe it or even how much I try and pretend that it doesn't hurt that much, the truth is, it hurts so badly and so deeply. I know you're not supposed to be attached to material possessions because that's all they are, but everything I had had a story. Yes, it's going to take money to get it back, but there's things that can't be replaced. I lost a plant that was from my Uncle Bill's funeral. It was a nice and huge plant that I had nursed and cared for to make it grow and it was HUGE. I can buy another plant like that, but it's not the same. I just wish I could back time and go back and pretend like it all didn't happen. Like I've just been working hard on the road for the past month and my house is there, just like I left it. Unfortunately, I have that dream every night and then I wake up in a different place.