I was awakened at 3 AM Saturday morning by a frantic banging on my door. I jumped out of bed (yes, I jumped, I'm wide awake when startled from sleep), hurried to the door, opened it, and immediately shut it again. Smoke was just pouring down the breezeway because the apartment next door was on fire. I hurried back into my bedroom, threw on a bra, some shoes, a jacket, put the harness on my cat, grabbed my keys and wallet and booked it out of there. As I turned to close the door, I saw flames leaping from the neighbor's door and decided that I wasn't going to lock my apartment because the firefighters were most likely going to need to get in there. My legs shook as I scrambled down the stairs and my cat urinated on me in fear. As we stood a safe distance away and watched the smoke billow into the sky, fire trucks roared around the corner and caused my cat to leap off my chest and dance in mid-air at the end of his leash. I grabbed him again and decided the best place for him to be was in the car. Then I decided the best place for me to be was at my parents. I knew that we would be standing around outside for at least two hours and didn't really want to do that in the cold, in my pajamas (though they were my cute blue flannel ones, and I had actually worn the matching top to bed that night), smelling like cat pee. So I drove home, borrowed pajamas from my brother, and watched the beginning of Conan the Destroyer and the end of the top 50 videos of 2001 (Drops of Jupiter by Train was #1, what's with that?). Then I drove back to the apartment complex, gave my name to the fire personnel and surveyed the damage. My apartment is ruined. The smoke damage is pretty much complete. Everything is covered in soot and smells like some twisted campfire. It's really pretty devastating because it's all there, all my stuff is still there, intact, it's just ruined because of the stains and the smell. That awful, horrid smell. I've moved from feeling that's "It's just stuff." to "Yes, but it's my stuff." to "I hate that smell!" to "It's all my fault, I should have locked the door." I'm currently staying with my parents while my dad manically washes load after load of laundry for me. I've decided that I'm going to break my lease, I can't live there anymore, not at the complex, not when there's now been two fires in as many months. I guess I'll stay in the guest bedroom and ship Thomas off to Flagstaff again. I'm not in a hurry to rent anything because, well, I'm not sure what I have that's salvagable. Will my dining room table and chairs be fine once they're cleaned off? Will I ever get that smell out of my books? Is my bed lost? What about my TV and computer?
It's just stuff.
Right?