Chris

This weekend will mark the anniversary of our house fire, truly a life event that propelled us onto a completely different course and altered the timeline of our lives. I haven’t written in a long while. Harvey happened and my entire city felt like I had been feeling for 8 months, lost and sad and…

One thing I learned in therapy during the last 8 months is when there is tragedy, no matter the cause, the emotional response is always the same. During Harvey I knew how the victims felt, not because our house flooded, but because I know what it feels like to loose everything suddenly. I know what…

Before the fire I wasn’t sure I’d be continuing with photography in the same scope I had done in the past. My heart wasn’t there. It had become work. I was frustrated and tired. As I dug through the rubble of my home, I entered what was left of my office and searched for my…

I thought I was done with panic attacks. It really has been months since I last had one. If I think on them hard enough I can still feel the remnants of the feelings, they linger in my mind and in my heart. After a very full day of volunteering I received the following email.…

We spent five days sitting in our house waiting for tragedy. Honestly after you experience tragedy, there’s a part of you that’s always expecting it again. I watched people get off boats both in person and on TV and while most of them are smiling, there is an instant where there is a blank stare. It’s…

I have been trying to write about this for a while now. There are a lot of emotions attached to this experience, there’s a lot of pain and hurt and guilt and all the things I’ve written about thus far. They are the things that take time to work through, the things you have to…

Noise is hard. Drama is hard. One of my favorite TV shows is The Walking Dead. I have a slight fascination with zombie based lore. Our fire was on a Friday, the new season premiered two days later on Sunday. I haven’t been able to watch a single episode. Watching a show that places me…

Days after the fire a family friend messaged me and let me know friends of hers had a bed and some other furniture they would like to give me. Days after the fire I couldn’t even comprehend buying underwear, much less what furniture we would need. My brain was broken, it didn’t function. I’m not…

When you write a nasty message to a company on Facebook at close to midnight remember that there is a human being on the other end managing that social media account that gets a ping to their phone. And then they read the message. And then they can’t sleep. Because they’ve had such a year…

I often have people ask me, “How are things?” If they are truly interested in how things actually are, there’s typically a sideways glance attached to the question. Their eyebrows are raised slightly in the center and they always shrug and nod their head slightly when they ask. It’s almost like they’re afraid to ask.…