The storm that changed my life

I sat on the bus with my earbuds blasting in my ears. I was on the greyhound bus heading east out of Texas. I was on the way to my new life in Massachusetts. I was leaving the place I had known for seventeen years because of a dust storm that had happened only a few weeks before.

It was a nice summer day in June. It had been a typical summer day in Texas, the kinda day you go have BBQs with friends and then go swimming. You know, just a normal summer day with friends. My friend's family had invited my family over for a summer kick-off BBQ. Our families tried to get together as much as possible during the summer.  The day started off fun.  We grilled burgers and hotdogs and spent the day splashing in the pool. My friend and I loved hanging out by the pool. My brother came out with water balloons and started to hit us with them. We laughed it off, my brother was just doing things that normal teenage boys do.  We did what teenagers do - talk and just have fun. We were just enjoying the summer before our senior year of high school. It felt like the whole world was ahead of us.

It was getting kinda late. So my dad said we should get going soon before it got too dark. We didn't live that far from my friend's house so earlier that day we walked to my friend's house. Little did we know how much our lives would change. After my dad told us we should go  we got our stuff ready and we started to leave. It had been a little windy that day, but nothing out of the ordinary so no one thought about it…

No one could have been ready for what was about to happen next. The skys turned into a dark grey and the wind had started and then the dust started to kick up. 

Time had felt like it had slowed down. It felt like an apocalyptic movie.  All of our senses  were disoriented. we had to run with our arms over our faces to stop being pelted by the sand.  The sand felt like tiny pieces of glass hitting your skin. The strength of the wind made it difficult to run. It felt like running in quicksand. The sound was deafening. All around us glass was shattering. It was a scary time you couldn't even see in front of you. It had felt like a horror movie but you were living it and not just watching it on tv. 

When we finally got to my friend's house the wind and sand hit so hard it broke the windows. BOOM. We all jumped as the glass shattered. Next, the power got cut off because of the storm. All around you could hear the wind. All around you could hear the sand hitting cars and homes. It was a scary time that had felt like it was never going to end. Time stood still 

As soon as it had started it had ended. Soon after the dust storm we had left our friend's house and then we went home but when we got home there was nothing there. The winds had been so strong that it had blown away our house. There was dust everywhere. My body felt like it was sand. I felt like I couldn’t move.I  was in pure disbelief seeing my home destroyed. All our memories were gone in an instant. Time stood still. 

The  next few weeks after the storm were a blur we went through the rubble to try to find family pictures and my parents' wedding pictures. My grandparents' wedding rings were also in the house, lucky we kept those in the safe along with the other important things of my family.

 It was weird seeing the house that my brother and I had grown up in. Now the house was just rubble. The next few weeks seem like a blur. We had to stay at a hotel until we could figure out what to do. My parents thought it would be best if we moved to Massachusetts. My parents grew up in Massachusetts and we had family. My parents thought it would be best to be near family. I disagreed. 

I had my whole life  in  Texas. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. I didn’t want to start senior year in a new state where I knew no one. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of Texas. I had lived in Texas my whole life and now I had to leave. 

During those couple of weeks of living in the hotel were stressful.  We needed to talk to the insurance company to work everything out because we had lost everything due to the dust storm.Other than that we had to talk to our family in Massachusetts to see who we could stay with. While we tried to figure everything out. 

I had spent a lot of that time with my friends before we moved. It was hard knowing in a few weeks I would live on the other side of the country and that we couldn’t hang out everyday and talk everyday and do what teenagers do. We were supposed to be talking about senior year not spend these weeks of June talking about me moving. 

My last day in Texas was hard because I had spent that day with my friends. Because we all knew then that would be that last time we would all hang out for a long time. We went to our favorite smoothie place and got some smoothies  and just talked for hours before I had to leave to meet my parents and my brother at the hotel. My friends walked me to the hotel and we hugged goodbye and I smiled and walked away to meet my parents and my brother. 

When we left, it was hard knowing that we would not come home. So here we are. Sitting on the bus with my earbuds blasting in my ears.