Part XII — The Wait

Part twelve of a series chronicling Hurricane Helene recovery from the perspective of a homeowner, disaster recovery volunteer, and community advocate.

Taken October 9, 2024 as I stood there reading the slogan and wondering — which one?

You might be wondering why, after eleven consecutive days of essays, I’ve suddenly gone quiet.

Perhaps it’s because I’d hoped that future essays would begin unfolding alongside the moments they describe. Perhaps it’s because there are only so many times a person can write “we’re still waiting” before every post begins to resemble the last. Or, perhaps, I wanted you to experience something that has become so ordinary in my life that I scarcely notice it anymore — the wait itself.

Waiting has been the general state of my life.

Not the sort of waiting that lasts an afternoon in a doctor’s office or a week for a package to arrive, but instead the kind of waiting that quietly rearranges a life. The kind that stretches across months and years until you stop asking when something will happen and instead begin measuring your life by what you’re still waiting for.

As a child, I waited for a time when I would be loved.

We tell ourselves comforting stories about childhood. That every child enters the world surrounded by love and that home is where you’re safest — that parents always want what’s best for their children. Reality, unfortunately, has never shown much concern for the stories we tell ourselves.

Not that long ago, as my father sat quietly dying, I asked him a question I’d spent a lifetime avoiding.

“Do you love me?”

When the answer came he turned toward me — not quite making eye contact and said flatly: “I love who you were supposed to be. Not… this.”

There are some waits that end not with relief, but with certainty.

As a young adult, I waited for an education. There is no system designed for a homeschooled child who wasn’t really homeschooled at all. One who received neither diploma nor GED. One who couldn’t even apply for financial aid without the consent of parents who would never provide it. I eventually found my way into a tiny community college carrying a transcript I’d made myself, hoping no one would ever look closely enough to realize just how improvised my life really was.

From 2007 until 2012, I waited for the house that had always been intended for me to become somewhere I could occupy… from 2012 until 2024, I waited for it to become my own.

Waiting for acceptance. Waiting for stability. Waiting for life to begin.

People speak often about patience as though it were a virtue. Picturing someone standing calmly in line. Smiling politely through inconvenience. But they never speak of what waiting does to you when it becomes the architecture of your life.

You stop making plans too far into the future because experience has taught you they’ll probably change, and you make plans impossibly far into the future because you must, and most of all you become astonishingly good at surviving uncertainty because you’ve never known what certainty feels like.

You begin to postpone joy, and you stop saying, “When this is over…” because there will always be another “this.” Somewhere along the way you realize that waiting isn’t something you’re doing — it’s simply the shape your life has been given by choices made long before you, by people who never intended for you to become whole.

So when Hurricane Helene arrived on September 27th, and Joe loaded the children into the car while I stayed behind to do what needed doing, I wasn’t frightened by the prospect of waiting.

It was simply another season.

I waited for the floodwaters to recede. I waited for roads to reopen. I waited for enough dry weather to begin pulling ruined insulation, soaked drywall, flooring, and debris from the house before mold could claim what little remained.

It would be October 9th before it was finally safe enough for Joe and the children to come home. By then I’d done everything I knew how to do.

The standing water was gone and the debris had been hauled away, second-hand dehumidifiers hummed, and air purifiers worked tirelessly to make the house breathable again. The house wasn’t whole, but it was dry enough. Safe enough. We would, at last, all sleep beneath the same roof again.

Or so we thought.

We had barely pulled into the driveway when one of the children quietly said, “I see smoke.”

And they did. The utility pole feeding electricity to our house was on fire. Joe sighed with the sort of exhausted resignation only disaster seems capable of teaching. The children climbed back into the car, and the dinner we’d imagined finally sharing together beneath our own damaged roof became chicken tenders somewhere else while I waited for the fire department.

Another wait.

Months later came Renew NC with applications and income verification and environmental reviews and damage assessments and award determinations. Each stage introduced with the promise that once this step was complete, things would begin moving.

Soon, always soon, as November became December and December became January and Winter became spring and spring became June.

Waiting has a peculiar relationship with hope. Every new phone call feels like it might be the one. Every envelope in the mailbox quickens your pulse. Every unknown number makes you pause before answering. Perhaps this is it — perhaps we’re finally moving forward.

Then, for a brief moment, everything accelerated as deadlines became measured in days instead of months. It felt, finally, as though the waiting might be over. Just as I’d hoped, all those months ago, that my father would finally give me an answer, I found myself hoping Renew NC would do the same. Perhaps not relief. But certainty.

The appeal paperwork said a determination would be made within ten days and after everything we’d already endured, ten days sounded almost immediate.

…Today is day thirty-seven.

This week a letter arrived from Renew NC and I opened it hopefully, expecting an answer. Instead, it was a Notice of Extension informing us only that more time would be required to determine the outcome of our appeal. No estimated completion date. No explanation for how much longer. Only another wait.

These essays began because I wanted to document what it costs to survive a disaster. I needed you to know that survival is measured in demolition, reconstruction, insurance disputes, duplication of benefits, cardboard boxes, tiny forever-damaged lungs, and paperwork.

But it’s also measured in hours.

And while I know that this wait will end eventually too — the appeal will be decided and the house will come down and a new one will rise in its place — I’m beginning to suspect that waiting is very costly. Waiting has a way of quietly taking pieces of a life while you aren’t paying attention. It eats birthdays and family dinners and Christmases and ordinary Tuesdays that you didn’t miss very much at the time and the certainty that next month will be different from this one.

Entire seasons disappear while you remain convinced that life will resume after just one more phone call, one more meeting, one more letter, and eventually? You look up and realize years have passed while you’ve been preparing for your life to begin.

Perhaps that’s why I wrote eleven essays in eleven days, because after a lifetime of waiting, I wanted — if only for a little while — to stop postponing the act of living.

If you wish to be a part of this moment and participate in our recovery? Be certain to visit our LinkTree that includes our GoFundMe, Wishlists, and contact information.