A Dark Cloud Whose Silver Lining I’m Still Looking For…

As you all probably noticed, my activity went from high to below ground level fairly soon, this started because of school work which soon piled up on me…then an earthquake hit the country where I live (México) on September 8[sup]th[/sup]. While nothing major happened in the city, the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas in the coast line were heavily affected by this (This will be relevant later), and it was still chaotic enough to keep me away and even more work got piled up as schools closed and the loss of classes slammed down even more work for me and my classmates to make up for the two lost days, then the parties for the independence day (16) came.

As some of you may know thanks to private Discord messages, I was planning to come back soon as y load of work was slowly getting smaller and I was being able to handle it better…but my plans took an unexpected turn for the worse this 19[sup]th[/sup]. Back in 1985, the worst earthquake in Mexico’s story struck the country that day. Have you heard about the lighting falling twice in the same place? Well…something similar happened to me and the rest of the city.

The day was supposed to be nothing more but a memorial in respect of the victims of the old disaster. Our surprise was huge when a terrible earthquake struck that same day, only days appart from the previous one. Buildings collapsed or exploded because of gas leaks, fires were everywhere in the city, it reeked of gas nearly everywhere, bridges and road were cracked…well, chaos was imminent and unluckily the death toll was really high.

You know one of the worst parts of this?

Because of the previous quake ALL resources for disasters were already in Chiapas and Oaxaca. Nobody expected a second and probably even worse earthquake striking us again so soon, leaving the states of Puebla, Morelos and Mexico City (Where I live) with nearly nothing to work with.

Luckily, even if many say otherwise, mexicans are always willing to jump into action to help those in need. This wasn’t the exception, as civils took upon them the costs and roles that couldn’t be fulfilled by the authorities or expert groups, not willing to wait for them and risk the lives of those trapped under the rubbish of the collapsed buildings. In these situations, as you probably know, every single second is precious.

I’m one of those that luckily managed to get out from this catastrophe unscathed, and because of this I’m being a volunteer to deliver food, water, equipment and medicines from where we collect them to the places that need them, as well to help with the rescues by removing rubbish manually to avoid damaging the structure even further whenever I can. I don’t know if I’ll be back anytime soon. I will, I just don’t know when.

Guess who’s finally back?!

I’m sorry for taking so long to come back, but the aftermath of the earthquake was greater than expected. I lost two whole weeks of school as the rescue missions were still going, while I didn’t lost any loved ones under the collapsed buildings I had to support some friends that did, and even some that while didn’t lost any loved ones did lost EVERYTHING they had as their homes were reduced to nothing but debris.

My college, which luckily didn’t suffer from structural damage and consequently is 100% safe, took in all the students of the college “Tecnológico de Monterrey” as their campus was severely damaged (They even lost 5 students, crushed under debris as some of their structures collapsed, and had at least 40 more that while alive were severely injured) and its impossible for them to return to take classes in it until the repair and reinforcement works are over. However, while there was no structural damage, there was indeed some aesthetic damage done to many of our campus’ buildings and because it is impossible to start the repair work during classes given the need of the classrooms, libraries and laboratories in those buildings as we have not one but two whole colleges depending on them now, my semester will be cut short by what we expect to be from 2 weeks to a full month. This means that the workload on both teachers and students went from high to astronomical, as we need to finish the plan of studies that we had in half the time if not a bit less.

Yes, I’m fine. No, I’m not too overwhelmed to try and come back. However, I really hope you understand that while I’ll finally be able to come back, given the amount of work I have at the time my activity will be fairly low and my posts slow.

Also, while I managed to get over the obvious trauma that this kind of experiences bring with them by now and I’m willing to talk about it and even share some details if any of you feel curious, if at any point I start to get uncomfortable and ask for a change of subject for the time being I beg you to listen, as the memories of this kind of events are not the kind that make you want to smile and speak about it for more than 20 minutes or so.