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miatalovingpos · 7 years

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“Why won’t you evacuate?” “Why can’t you come to work?” “You don’t have it that bad!” “You still have power and wifi! You’re not in Houston! Stop lying and taking advantage of the situation!” “You should die for posting on social media and not doing something about the flood.”

People, it’s bad. I’m tired of self-centered, cozy, and currently safe people telling me it’s not. I’m trapped on high ground while everything else around me is still flooded anytime it rains. Yes, I still have power. That doesn’t mean we’re not struggling too. We have no access to food unless we go several miles down a spotty road to a store that runs out of everything before 2pm every day. It’s the only grocery store open in the area. There are looters not too far from here and if they decide to come here, there’s no way for us to get help if they become aggressive and dangerous. Police are busy saving people in the flooded neighboring areas and we’ve been left on our own. We keep a baseball bat by the door and a gun in the bedroom ‘just in case’ like typical Texans. That doesn’t guarantee our safety though.

We share our water since we still have access to our well, our neighbors check in on us when it rains for a while just to make sure we’re okay since the back yard floods so easily, family and friends are being rescued in boats and helicopters that we can hear not too far away from the house, and we have to stay up at night if it starts raining just to make sure it doesn’t get close to the door the way it did Saturday night. We help in the small way that we can but there’s nothing we can really do. We don’t have any money to donate that we don’t need for ourselves while we can’t work without being in a dangerous situation on the road, we don’t have a boat to take out to help people, neither my boyfriend or myself are currently trained to be useful for any sort of medical help (and they can’t train us on the spot in this emergency since we’d be a liability), and our vehicles are mid-sized sedans, not the jacked up trucks that you need to get through the flood waters. So we can’t help. We can only donate water when people drop by with their own jugs to fill. My manager is crazy to ask me to go to work tomorrow when it’s possible it’ll start raining again. I work for a restaurant about 20 miles North of here and there is no way I can make it there in my car when I don’t have money for gas or a gas station open to stop at. Not to mention the map above shows how many closed roads there are between here and there. I might lose my job. So don’t blame me for not helping.

We were not told to evacuate because evacuating this many people out of the Houston area would have been impossible and people would have died when the storm hit because of all the traffic since the roads would’ve been the first to flood. We WERE warned ahead of time that Harvey would be near us, yes. However, we WEREN’T told that it would dump this much rain on us, that the majority of Houston would be overflowing with water within 48 hours, that rivers and bayous would back up so badly that it would flood all of the houses near them, and that the storm would just hang over us, not allowing us to get out. We were told NONE of this beforehand while we had time to leave. My boyfriend’s mom and dad only left because his mother is paranoid and leaves to her second home anytime there is a storm headed this way. Not everyone is like that. There were pets to watch, a job to continue going to, and a life to continue living. This storm was downplayed in our area and we believed it would just soak the yard and be gone to the North where it would dissipate. Obviously that was not the case.

DO NOT TELL ME IT WAS MY CHOICE TO STAY THAT PUT ME IN THIS MESS! DO NOT TELL ANYONE FROM HOUSTON THAT IT’S THEIR FAULT THIS IS HAPPENING TO THEM! 9 bodies have been found in the floods. People. Have. Died. and several more people are missing. I didn’t even vote this year and people are still telling Texans that we deserve to die because we were a Republican state. I’m sorry but what the ever loving HELL does that have anything to do with the children and minorities down here that are suffering along WITH the white redneck republicans in the same damn boats? There are a lot of liberals down here as well and you’re wishing death on the whole state because you can’t get your head out of your ass. Some of you still need to think about the fact that there are over 7 million people down here and you think that every last one of them is a conservative asshole.

Texas has been hit with tropical storms before and they weren’t this bad. Harvey wasn’t supposed to hit us with more than tropical storm strength so we figured we’d be fine. The same way you think you’ll be just fine before you get into a car accident on a normal day. You can’t predict that you’ll get into that accident. You know there’s a chance but you can’t prepare for it every single day. You know that it’ll rain so you drive a little more carefully but you don’t expect the ‘other guy’ to turn right into your lane and hit you so hard that someone dies, you flip, the whole car is destroyed, and you have to wait for help from anyone willing to get you out of there.

I have posted to both Whisper and iFunny out of boredom of being stuck in the house for several days straight and iFunny was surprisingly supportive and open to my explanation as to why I didn’t evacuate. Whisper, however, is a horrible app with horrible people that think they have a license to be an asshole. Unless you legit receive help on that app, I highly suggest you delete it. It breeds nothing but miscommunication through limited characters in a post and everyone thinks they’re invincible. I NEVER post to Tumblr unless it’s a repost of something I wanted to repost. But lately I’ve been wanting to find a good online community that won’t tear me apart for being privileged in this shitty situation while also providing some sort of moral support while my friends without power save their phone batteries for emergencies. So, Tumblr, I’d like to hear from you if you have any input on the situation.

Donations are a great help. Donate to any charity of your choice that’s specifying disaster relief funds and they’ll do the rest. Ex: Red Cross, LGBTQ, etc. Animals have also been affected so donating to local shelters helps them support more stranded pets and helps operations to save abandoned pets. We haven’t taken in any personally but I do know some people that have been picking up stranded pets off of flooded roads and keeping them in their homes until everything is good and well. (Of course, they post to Facebook asking for the owners to claim them so they can get them home.)

I know people have posted about this already but I feel that it’s important to get as many people’s experiences and thoughts out there. The more people who are aware of what’s going on, the less ignorance and hurtful comments are said. The last thing anyone wants is for someone who’s lost everything to be told that they’re not struggling because they aren’t from Florida that gets rain up their asshole 24/7 like I’ve been told by more than 3 people or from a different part of the world that gets typhoons every month. That person’s life is still destroyed and they may not have anywhere to go or any way to get their life back. If they have the privilege of seeing your hurtful words when they’re seeking emotional help, you had better expect them to wish some pretty hurtful things on you in their time of emotional turmoil. You had better prepare for the special kind of hell you’ll be going through later in life (or after life if you believe in that kind of thing.) Your opinion is not grounds to bully someone when they’re suffering. Karma will be a bitch.

If you’re not from here, you probably haven’t thought about the fact that a lot of these people that have lost their homes were refugees from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They are living this hell AGAIN. I didn’t even think about it until I saw a comment on a Facebook post about it. I didn’t even remember Katrina since I was too young at the time. These people are mentally beaten down and if you’re telling them their suffering isn’t true suffering, that they’re still privileged for the things they HAD, you need to take a reality check and think about how you’d feel if you’d lost your home TWICE via hurricane. If they’re posting about it, they’re really upset and they want some sort of confirmation that what they’re dealing with is bad, some sort of encouragement that they can stay strong in this situation. Because in their minds, they just want help. They want someone to have their back and them they can do it. That they can get back up and start all over again. Maybe it is a cry for some attention. Because at least that attention means that they’re not alone.

Say it with me: Hurricane Harvey is not a pity party or competition! Suffering is suffering, no matter who you are or where you are! If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all!

I’m not personally in that extreme of a situation. I’m just bored waiting for the roads to open up so we can go get more food since we’re running low and so I can visit my family. But consider this a PSA for those of you that have shot people down that are going through this because they were posting about it or asking for some sort of acknowledgement. I’ve personally gotten threats and comments that have made me feel like more should’ve happened to me for anything I say to be taken seriously. I was SO lucky to have not been flooded. The only thing we got was a puddle under the door and some knocked down tree limbs and small trees. In one of my pics, you can see that the flooding down the street covered the road even AFTER it had time to drain. That water had covered the road in front of our house at the time of the storm and had been creeping up to the front door when we went to sleep for a couple of hours Saturday night. When we woke up, it had receded back to the ditch.

This is what the rest of the area looked like when they woke up: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katebubacz/17-photos-show-just-how-bad-the-flooding-in-houston-really?bffbmain&ref=bffbmain&utm_term=.liAkn03Zl#.leyX3k50B

This post is for those that have shut up about it because of the demented and horrible things that have been said to them. The ones who silently suffer. This post is to tell every person that has told a Texan “you don’t have it that bad” or “you have no right to bitch since you didn’t evacuate” or “you and every other Texan liberal needs to die” among other things that you don’t know what we’re going through right now. You don’t get to speak. You might have experience in something similar, but you don’t know this exact situation and YOU are the one that has no right to speak horribly to us for the majority of the state’s voting preferences. If you have words of encouragement and a way to support the people down here, it’s greatly appreciated. If you have nothing but hate to spread and horrible things to say, keep it to yourself.

If you’re a fellow Houstonian in the area, keep your chin up. Everyone is struggling. Help where you can and take care of yourself. We’re entering the recovery period of this disaster and it’s a long road ahead of us. If you’re lucky enough to have internet or access to this post, please spread the word that we’re here for everyone. We’re proud Texans and we are banding together to help each other. Even just allowing people to fill jugs of water from your sink is enough to help a family. If you can’t help, just take care of yourself. That’s just as important as helping others.

We love you. We hope you’re safe. If you need emotional support in this, go ahead and directly message me. If you’re a bystander, just support people down here in whatever way you can. You don’t need to feed into an attention seeker if they’re being strongly opinionated about it. But understand that it’s their way of communicating and coping. Please, only provide support or ignore someone if you don’t have anything nice to say.

Hope everyone is having a good day. This has been a long, emotional, rant-filled post. If you made it to the end, thank you.

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