Out of the Fire: How Losing My Home Changed My Life

No one ever, ever thinks that it will be them. Be it a severe accident, a disease, or in my case a fire, it's one of those things that you are never prepared for no matter how much you think you are.

I was house cleaning for a friend when I got the call.

Now, your first instinct when receiving a call like that is that the person on the other end is playing some sort of cruel joke on you. After realizing that it wasn't and making sure that my sister and my nine month old daughter were safe I rushed home. Well, rushed back to what was left of it.

The fire was out by the time I got there. The upside, not the whole house was completely gone. The fire trucks were still parked in the driveway and people were standing around staring at the blackened, smoking home.

I remember how much it amazed me that people could stand there watching my home burn, watching us cry and the worst part about it was that some of them were people we didn't even really know.

One of the firemen addressed me and informed me that we had lost a dog and some cats. Then they took me to the side of the house where the fire had been the worst. There they gave me a photo album and a baby book that had been saved from my room.

My tears spilled over them; it was all that was left of mine. The major part of the fire had been on my half of the house. Like it was yesterday I can remember that moment. How I sat on the side walk and at the age of eighteen wept like a child.

But, through my tears I saw something in the daffodils that bordered our sidewalk. It was my bible, the one that had been given to me by very special people. Lifting it up I held it close to me, along with my other possessions that had been saved.

After that day there was a lot of work to be done, cleaning mainly. A lot of the major appliances and electronics were ok. But most of the personal items were gone. It's a really weird feeling to wipe away the smoke damage from things that are not the items that you wish had survived.

Being that we didn't have renters insurance we then had to get back to real life without having a home. Fact of the matter is that my life really wasn't that great. As a single mother I couldn't afford a house on my income alone. I stayed with great friends of mine who welcomed me for as long as I needed.

It ended up being almost two years. The many factors of my life kept me there. Factors such as lack of money, no direction and parenting skills that really needed to be developed. As much as I loved it there something inside me told me it was time to move on.

I finally decided that I should move in with my mom for a while. It would give me time to decide where I was going with my life. I couldn't tell what it was that made me feel like that. The restlessness inside of me was getting worse by the day. Not to mention the run of bad luck that seemed to be getting worse by the day.

For some unknown reason I developed a spontaneous pneumothorax, in layman's terms that is a collapsed lung. I worked at a casino and was gambling way too much and I had to work the night shift so I could be home in the morning with my daughter when my mom left for work. The list could go on and on.

I had only lived there a few months when it happened again. Fire seemed to be my ultimate enemy. This time an electrical fire took the entire trailer, nothing, not one thing was left of that house.

Remember when I said you never think it will be you. Well once is one thing, but twice is something you really think will never happen. Upside of this one was that luckily, like the first one, no one was home when the fire started.

Thank goodness that I have friends that love me and took us in again.

It didn't take long after the last fire for me to realize that something was pushing me away from my hometown. I had known this for a while, but had done nothing to change it because in my head I thought, bad things happen. Deal with it

I thought that if I left it would be running away from my problems instead of facing them. It took two house fires for me to realize that wasn't true. I could start a new life somewhere else.

No feeling in the world can compare to how it feels to lose your home in a fire. To see your life burned to ashes. But, as time passed by I came to a lot of realizations.

Things are just things.

Clothes can be replaced and furniture can be bought. The photos that were lost can't be replaced, but you can lock the memories of them into your mind and take pictures of the life ahead of you.

I realized how lucky I am to actually be alive. Any one of us could have been in those fires. Life and living it, really living it, is the most important thing we have and those fires saved my life.

I moved. I moved to where I finally found the rest of my life. Within a year of moving I went from a single mom with no direction, to a working girl that got her own apartment and then married the man of her dreams.

And six years later I sit here and write this, sure of the fact that I would not be the person that I am now without losing my home and my life twice. I am also sure that I am now comfortable in my own skin and thankful for all the events that have led up to how happy I truly am today.