Personal Narrative Essay: What I Learned From The Fire

What I Learned From the Fire During finals week, you learn to expect the unexpected, which was proven quite true for me while I was studying for my last, and arguably hardest two tests of my freshman year. I was only days away of sleeping in and binge watching “The Office” without worrying about classes. I could not wait to get out of the dorms and back in my own bed for the summer, but for now I was frantically studying. I was sitting up against the wall on my uncomfortable dorm bed with my knees holding up my spiral notebook. The only light was coming from my desk in the opposite corner of the small room and the sole sound was my computer faintly playing my country playlist through the speaker. In the darkness, I was easily drawn to the …show more content…
Most of the pictures were blurry; all I could see on my tiny phone screen was black soot. It was difficult to really understand the damage. Luckily, the fire was contained to our living room and our attic; we did not lose anything of significance. Many of our family and close friends came to help us. None of our bedrooms or family photos were touched. There was, however, a remarkable amount of smoke damage in the entire house— enough to replace or professionally clean the majority of our belongings. We would be displaced at least a few months, but the timetable could go as long as a year and a half. Slowly my thoughts and dreams of going home, were turning into nightmares. The firefighters told my parents that we were around three minutes away from losing the entire house; three minutes away from losing every childhood memory. Those thoughts came over me and the feelings hit me like a freight train. I felt selfish. I had always felt fortunate for the life I lived and for the people in it. However, it was not until I heard how bad the fire could have been and my tears started to go away, did I understand just how fortunate I was. Earlier that evening when I had been complaining about my how uncomfortable and small my dorm was, when my house was going up into flames. The amount of time that I complained in the last nine months outweighed the time my home had burned at least fifty to one; how selfish of …show more content…
My mom insisted that I stay and take my finals, but I could not stand the idea of not being with my family. I was sick to my stomach the entire two hours and I could not help but flinch when I heard sirens. When I stepped out of the car two hours later, the smell of smoke was overwhelming. I walked into the house to my sisters running up to me with a layer of soot on the bottom of their shoes. The room looked like something you might see on the news, not in your own home. I saw all of the small details that you could not see in a picture. The sliding glass door in the corner of the room was shattered due to the heat. There were outlines on the wall where photos used to be from the smoke. The attic was falling apart and our wood flooring was singed to a black, burnt crisp. We all stood in a circle in the middle of the room, mindlessly talking and trying to make small jokes. In the late hours of the night, all of our friends started to disperse to their homes. My parents and my sisters and I all went to our separate places to stay. My sisters and I stayed with my best friend and my parents stayed with our family friends, who were also our neighbors. The next morning I was back on my way to San Diego for my finals. I did not feel prepared and could not stay focused on the tests sitting in front of me. I moved myself out of the dorms since my parents were a little preoccupied. I was disappointed having to do everything on my