Laying it on the Line

I suppose I'm still licking my wounds.  Death and trauma can really warp.  It's not imagined or a mental disease.  It's how the human brain works and reacts and figures shit out or...sometimes misfires.

Like any classic tale - the omen sewed it's seeds within the ferocity of a storm named Sandy.  The storm   zeroed in on the northeast like a cancer.  Spreading it's vicious fury across the skin of the Atlantic Ocean and setting it's sights on some of the area's most precious and vital organs.

I didn't evacuate New York City.  No one told me to.  Yes - the media hyped up the pending storm as they did with Hurricane Irene...and while Hurricane Irene packed a wallop along interior sections of New Jersey and the East Coast - the anticipated hit along the coast and the city was overblown.

So I stayed.  I live in a brand new building.  In an apartment that no one has lived.  And someone will be stepping foot where I stepped or laying their head down close to where I did 100 years from now.  I hope.  

I could see a flash explosion from my apartment window and everything went dark.  Cell phone service ceased. It would be weeks before the power was back on and the hot water was working.  Oh and you couldn't walk the streets of Lower Manhattan at night.  From 29th street on down, the lights were out.  The buses and taxis refused to venture into the dark.  They didn't want to run over anyone.

The Jersey Shore.  I will shake my fist at New Jersey in a million different ways for a million different reasons.  But the beauty of the New Jersey coastline is so unique.  You do not know it unless you have spent decades there.  I found a special zen there when faced with so many difficult decisions and circumstances.  But the beating it took this time around will forever alter it's future.

Homes, carnival rides, boardwalk, memories, furniture, cars, photographs, lawnmowers, roofs ripped away and washed inwards and outwards.  

Yes - Seaside Heights is loud and obnoxious.  But a mile away is Island Beach State Park which is unspoiled beauty.  

Ending the year.  My dad got sick.  Beginning the year.  He died.  I don't think it's something I will process.  My hunch is...no one does.  You don't get over that. 

but you do go forward.  and love.  love.  love.  the best part of life is the people I get to love.  love forever.