A week has gone and yet I’m still out of words, more heartbroken. Exactly a week ago as most of us went through our day normally, my home, the city where I grew up; Cebu City, Philippines experienced the worst typhoon to date. The next morning (US time, couple hours after the typhoon passed Cebu around 11:00 PM-Ph time), I woke up early all of a sudden and a rush came through my head about the typhoon since I’ve heard about it a week before which led me to check my phone immediately. And as soon as I opened Facebook, there it was; images and videos I never ever expected to see and statuses of friends that were just truly unbelievable. This immediately went from one rush to another- check on my family and relatives. I started calling yet I couldn’t get answers. I left multiple messages and just stayed up and updated for a couple of hours before I head out again to get on with the usual work day. Hours passed and I still haven’t heard anything though I understood at the same time services were mostly down at that time. I went through my day feeling anxious, worried, and I can’t help but overthink about my loved ones based on the damages I’ve seen so far that day thanks to social media. It took at least 24 hours for me to find out my loved ones are okay and it had to come from someone else and not directly from them. Just like everyone, I’m very very thankful my loved ones are okay and alive.
As we all know, this super typhoon hit other islands as well and the damages are truly devastating. And as someone who lives abroad, I get daily updates only via social media because there’s not much coverage worldwide and locally unfortunately. I know I haven’t written my thoughts here for a while now and as I’ve said before, writing has always been a safe space for me and I will always get back to it especially in times like this when I need to express my thoughts- just like before. The hardest thing about being away in this very hard time my city is going through is that I can only do less. I wish to physically be there and help everyone rebuild our city but I can only do so much and I will use whatever I have and whatever I can in order to help. So this is me finally saying something, expressing my heart out slowly and I will continue to help with ANYTHING through social media like I already have in the last couple days and privately with my loved ones. To everyone who got affected by the super typhoon that are reading this, I will never 100% understand what you went through and experience because I wasn’t there when it happened but I believe this too shall pass and I’m so amazed how everyone is working together and helping each other get through this rough holiday time. No matter what the situation is, everybody deserves a nice, safe, and healthy holiday. Let me know if it will be a good idea to start some donations here or through my social media because I’ve honestly been thinking about it. Just working with connections for it. Either way I’m helping any way I can.
x,
Zaira
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