Short Story: The Great Texas Freeze of 2021
This one hurt to write
February 14, 2021
The storm has rolled in. Last year brought out the worst in humanity. People were fighting inside stores over food and paper. Hell, they were fighting while making line outside of stores, at gas stations, and on social media. People are dying and no one wants to be that statistic when the county sends its report. “Our county has received confirmation of an additional COVID-19 related death,” it will read. Watching your relatives slowly decline over Facetime knowing that you cannot even be with them – that is just torture. But is it any better to watch them as they slowly freeze to death?
Nothing has changed today. People are still fighting over limited supplies trickling into stores, just trying to stay alive. For some reason, many still believe toilet paper will keep them alive. Preparing for this storm was no different. And people are still dying. More will die during this storm. “To Build a Fire” would be a good story to assign my students right now. Or maybe “The Most Dangerous Game.”
February 15, 2021
A year ago, I had just finished moving back into my house after the fire that burned a large portion of it. I was stumbling as I got back on my feet, and life kicked me back down with the pandemic. Then, I worried about finding milk, diapers, meat, and eggs. I worried about what my family would eat and when they would eat.
Today, I am worried about those things and the dropping temperatures inside my home. I look for ways to safely generate heat from within the house without letting any cold wind in. How ironic. Fire and ice. Sometimes, when I am lucky, the heater will get the house to 70 degrees Fahrenheit before the blackout, but then I see the thermometer dropping 10-20 degrees in a matter of two hours during the blackout, and I cannot stop checking on my daughter and wife. I have little to no communication with the outside world, and I do not know how other people in my life are faring. How long will we go without electricity and how low will the temperature be by the time we get it back? They tell us to not turn on the heater or consume high amounts of electricity when we do have it, but when we do not have it, I see my baby girl, bundled up, getting pale and her cheeks turning rosy. She is so small and susceptible to the cold. She cannot even talk to let me know if she feels cold. And I hear my wife’s asthma flaring up. She coughs, and I hear her inhaler. I feel cold even while I sit in the dark living room with multiple blankets layered on me, and I see my own breath. This is not normal in Texas. I feel I am not in control of my own life…
February 16, 2021
I think the worst of the storm is over, but I am still worried. I cannot stop worrying. I laid awake past midnight worrying that maybe I am not the ideal provider for my family. I have tried so long to protect them from a virus, and I never expected I would have to find a way to protect them from the cold that creeped in. Maybe I am not enough of a man to protect my family against this world and give them everything they deserve. Maybe I am not strong enough to carry them through pandemics, storms, or life itself. Maybe I am not a good husband or a good father. Maybe I should have dropped out of school when my house burned and focused on surviving. Instead of learning about feelings, I should have learned to turn my home self-sustainable. I should have invested in solar power, planted vegetables in my garden, and grown chickens.
I wanted to better myself, but how can I better myself if I can barely make it to the end of the day? I am juggling a full-time teaching that really means working more than 40 hours a week, sponsoring clubs and organizations as expected of teachers, going to graduate school as a full-time student, participating in internships. This is not sustainable. How can I better myself when society is deteriorating? What will be the next thing to knock me down, and what if that knockdown turns out to be the one to knock me out? Why is no one talking about what has been happening around us? How will I ever make it through this labyrinth?
“Stop. Listen. You have survived every single thing you did not think you would survive. You are safe. You are loved. You are enough.”