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Warning: This blog post contains sensitive content that can trigger some people.
“In the blink of an eye, everything I had worked for was gone.”
In this post, I’ll share my personal journey through the devastating experience of a house fire, the emotional and practical challenges I faced in the aftermath, and how I found the strength to rebuild my life from the ground up. This is a story of resilience, loss, and the power of starting over, and overcoming challenges no matter how impossible it may seem.
We are all so used to our day to day routine, and we all tend to be in a hurry all the time, rushing to work, to the stores to pick up groceries, doing our day to day activities and It’s easy to overlook the routines and familiar aspects of our daily lives.
I went through a house fire in the winter of early 2012 and it was not an experience I want to remember but rather I’d love to forget about the event. I never talk about it since I left it in the past where it belongs. But I wanted to share my story and the message that comes from it to inspire others so they are reminded they can overcome anything.
That Night:
This was one of those situations we all hope “will never happen to us.” But in this case it did.
A song played in my cell phone the whole time the fire was happening which is the only thing I had left and which I had firmly gripped in my hand as I ran out from the fire that night and no shoes on my feet in middle of winter..
I was just getting through my evening routine after a long day and getting ready for bed. Something of a nagging internal voice told me I needed a new cellphone that day since mine was having issues as of lately. So I bought one and was setting it up Which is why I was still awake that time of night. That’s when I heard the fire alarm that night.
I heard the faint alarm in the hallway, I quickly rushed out of bed got my son from his room, covered him with a blanket to protect him from the smoke and rushed out in the dark of night in a black cloud of smoke. (Good thing we had fire doors on each side of the halls on every floor)we were on the 3d and top floor and we had to run down to the lobby of the building. Every tenant was running down the stairs including myself with my son half asleep in my arms, jumping over people almost, as we were all frantic to get to safety and to where we could breath again. As soon as I opened and left my apartment door I could not inhale 1 more breath of air it was only smoke which was choking me, all the way 3 floors down. Getting down to the main level felt like it took forever and for us, time had frozen in place in that moment and at the same time, it was the most important thing we had to work with. “Time.” It was a time to act and that was all we could do.
It was middle of winter, and since I ran out with just the clothes on my back, I had no shoes on my feet or jacket so next thing I did and the only thing I could do was run over to the neighbours house with my son to call for help.
so we sat down at the neighbours in complete shock. I was quietly realizing what had just happened and the panic of the thought of how life had changed in an instant and what to do next was sinking in very quickly.
Without a doubt, I knew I had someone watching over us that night because if I hadn’t of bought that cellphone that day, and hadn’t been setting it up before bed, I would of probably been asleep at that time of night.. or maybe not, since I was always very alert and in tune from day to day anyways. But even still, we got out. That’s all that matters but the “what if” still went through my mind at some point.
my instincts kicked in at the right time that night and I got us out safely. While all this is happening, some tenants were trying to find a way to go back up to their apartment to save their pets and 1 person to get a bottle or toy for their baby. some needed assistance from the fire department to get out of their apartment and one person in the apartment beside mine jumped out of the building because they had no way out the door. My apartment took the worst of the damage since it was 3 floors directly above the laundry facility where someone’s lit “smoke” had been discarded and not extinguished and as a result it started the fire.
This event has haunted me at times for many years and it is not an experience I would wish for anyone else to ever go through. I had to start over in a sense and I had to get a new place to live, get all the essentials to start over. I couldn’t go back inside to see if anything could be retrieved after the fact, because it was all burnt, the floor collapsed and even the blinds and window were gone.. I drove by, it was a haunting last snapshot of the horrible event captured in my mind forever.
Luckily, I was fortunate to have people from my family, friends and community help me put it back together. I had to get a new home, furniture, clothes, food, every home essential, and things you forgot you ever had to buy even once in a lifetime. It took a long time to stop looking in my closet for clothes I no longer had, because in my mind I couldn’t figure out if I did or not. I’d often catch myself looking for something I used to own but didn’t have anymore. It took a long time to sleep better at night..
Some of the tenants that lived in the same building the night of the fire, that went through the same situation as I did, had more of a challenge to relocate and start over. It took a long time to come to terms with the reality of what had happened and the fact that all those cherished possessions such as baby pictures, familiar clothes and belongings, gifts from Christmas for my son from Christmas Day that had just come and gone, cherished keepsakes from my childhood I had kept all those years, it had all disappeared with the cloud of smoke and became just memories without anything physical to remember it by. From then on, it was either engraved in the memories of my mind or gone forever like a smoke show.
But in the midst of all that, the most important was saved. We were. My son and myself . We could start over, we had the most valuable and the rest had come and gone. But even with all those lost “things” it could all be replaced. Which we did. After all they were just things. It took some time but we rebuilt our life and out of all of that had happened with going through that terrible event, I came to realize very quickly something I was reminded internally that I already knew: how precious life is and how everything can change in a split second. So never take even the simplicities of your day to day life for granted.
Here’s my message to you:
“Be grateful everyday for everything you have, down to the smallest thing. Be Present in your life and don’t worry about anything because worry never helps or changes anything. Even out of the worst situations you can overcome them and create something amazing and an amazing life! When we can’t see what’s ahead tomorrow, we are afraid, which prevents us from going forward. But you don’t need to see what’s ahead for tomorrow. I didn’t see what was in front of my tomorrow after that night. But I took the next step and it led me there anyways! You need to have faith and take the next step even when you don’t see it.”
