Home Sweet Home

So in February, my dad's house burnt down. Nothing was salvageable and he now lives over 1,000 miles away. This is the first summer I have not been able to live with my father. Needless to say, Father's Day last weekend was one of the hardest days I've had to live through.

While I was at school, I got a phone call from one of my best friends, Alyssa, telling me my house had been in a fire. First thing I thought was that it was my mom's house, but as it turns out, it was my father's. No one was hurt, thank God, but no one was also home which meant that the fire wasn't seen until after the house was already engulfed in flames. There is no saving the house and everything that was in the house is gone now.

And to stoke the fire more (pardon the pun) my dad lost his job a while ago and is very tight on money. He is now living with his mother 13 states away. On the bright side though, he saved enough money to make a trip back home to collect a few things from the sheds that made it out unscathed. So today I got to see my father again. Today was also my first time in the house since it burnt down.

This picture is of the staircase that led upstairs to mine and my father's room. I'm sorry about the awkward angle, but the room that the stairs fed into on the main floor no longer exists. So I took this one very carefully leaning over a possibly unstable ledge that now exists in the skeleton of my old home.

It's funny how quickly a fire can destroy not only a home, but the structure of a family. After I found out the house was gone, I came home from college for a week and cried. My dad kept telling me, "it's just stuff Ali. It can be replaced." But I don't think he realized how many memories have become just that. The spirit of the house is no longer there; it's buried under the ashes. I used to see my dad's house as salvation in my town. My mom and I have some pretty heated fights and that was always a place I felt safe. I don't have that anymore. Sure we can always buy new things, but there's no replacing my only safe-haven.

I lost not only a house or my father the day of the fire, but a little part of my sanity knowing that this summer I was going to be as trapped as a bird.

Quote:
"The roof caved in and the truth came out. I just didn't know what to do."