Olivia Degregory
Online:
On my laptop, I refresh my twitter feed repeatedly. 6pm update: Category Five Hurricane Dorian has stopped moving over the island of Grand Bahama. Winds speeds over two hundred miles per hour. Live updates confirm this is the strongest hurricane to ever impact the Northern Bahamian islands. I retweet everything relevant to the storm. I memorize the names in each missing person post; I share the list of working phone numbers for rescue teams; I scroll past the videos of dead bodies floating in the surge waters. I open my phone; I refresh my apps repeatedly. I open my chat with my best friend, I haven’t heard from her in hours – the last thing she told me was that she was hopping a fence with her two-year-old baby and going to a neighbour’s house because hers began to flood. I message her again. I open my family chat, I ask my family if they are okay. They tell me to stop worrying. I refresh my twitter feed. Families are trapped in their attics. An American woman tweets that she is worried her cruise next month will be cancelled. A seven-year-old has drowned in the storm. The water is up to the second-floor people’s homes. I feel sick.
Outside:
I lay outside on the sliver of lawn beside my house. I have laid out an old comforter and arranged myself so that I am not laying on any rocks or roots, yet still have shade from the trees. I glare at the clear sky. I hate it. I hate that the sun is out, I hate that the sky is blue, I hate how gently the clouds move and how sweetly the birds sing. How dare the day be so beautiful here in Virginia, when my family only knows rain and darkness in The Bahamas? I close my eyes to hide the painful beauty of the day. I’m supposed to be relaxing. I always find it relaxing outside, I do it as quality-time, as self-care. Right now, I loathe it. The trees rustle gently but my mind echoes with the howls of the two hundred mile per hours winds. A car passes and I see the images of cars floating around collapsed buildings. A neighbour and her child pass by, and I pray the child knows how to swim. I’m crying. I feel useless. I can’t enjoy the sun, I can’t enjoy the trees, I cannot be present here under this tree when my heart aches on an island far away.
Reflection:
Well, I must say this isn’t the same post I would have written had this assignment been done two weeks ago or even two weeks from now. At this moment my country is devastated, and it is truly the only thing on my mind. I can barely function. I think the hardest part about this was the conflicting feelings I felt during both hours. I knew I should have stayed off of social media because it was flooded with heart-breaking posts, but I also feel the need to know every update there was to know. I had to repost every missing person post, I had to share every rescue hotline number – yet still, the longer I spent online the sicker with grief I became. As for my experience outside, it was the absolute opposite of what I typically feel when I go outside. I love being outdoors, not really doing anything but taking in the surroundings; but I had to force myself away from my laptop to do it. The whole hour I just wanted to give up and go check my phone. I tried to remind myself that I should enjoy the luxury of good weather, but it just felt like a betrayal to enjoy it.